Latest / The Family Teams Podcast / Ep 6: Leaving and Cleaving: The Most Misinterpreted Marriage Verse in the Bible

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Ep 6: Leaving and Cleaving: The Most Misinterpreted Marriage Verse in the Bible · The Family Teams Podcast

• 0:00
  Does building a multi-generational family violate the clear instruction of Scripture to leave and cleave once you're married?
• 0:08
  This is probably the number one question that we get at Family Teams.
• 0:11
  In fact, if we do a video that even mentions the beauty of multi-generational family, the biblical precedent for multi-generational family, we will often get a comment somewhere in the comment section saying, Have you guys never read the verse about leaving and cleaving?
• 0:25
  Duh!
• 0:26
  Like, where you been?
• 0:27
  Yeah.
• 0:28
  Now, I have read that verse many, many times, and when the modern person reads that verse, they read something into it that is entirely different than what it's actually intended to communicate, and has never been read the way a modern person reads that.
• 0:42
  For thousands of years, we've had this verse, and I can give you guys the historic and biblical reasons for that.
• 0:46
  But first, I would love to play for you a quick video of a pastor who is articulating how most modern people that read the Bible understand,
• 0:56
  what they read into this passage.
• 0:57
  So this is from Pastor Mark Driscoll.
• 0:58
  I know he's really controversial, but I think he does summarize the way that I hear people interpreting this verse very, very consistently.
• 1:07
  So listen to this quick clip, and I will kind of unpack how we see this verse.
• 1:13
  When a young couple, let's just say a couple gets married, they are starting a brand new family.
• 1:19
  So when my daughter got married, I didn't say, I'm so glad that we're adding a son to the family.
• 1:25
  And when my son got married, I didn't say, I'm so glad we're adding a daughter to the family.
• 1:29
  Because the truth is, they're not joining our family, they're leaving their mother and father to do what?
• 1:36
  Start their own family.
• 1:38
  So ask my son-in-law or my daughter or my
• 1:41
  son or daughter-in-law, hey, how are you guys doing?
• 1:43
  How's your family?
• 1:46
  They're married, they have their own family.
• 1:48
  And where this really gets painful, holidays, where you live, where you go to church, how you educate your kids, all of a sudden they're like, hey, you can't do that.
• 1:58
  They're like, yeah, we can, because this is our family.
• 2:01
  No, no, no, that's not how our family does it.
• 2:02
  That's not how your family does it.
• 2:04
  Now that my kids are getting married, their spouses are not joining my family
• 2:10
  They are launching to start their own family.
• 2:13
  And now Grace and I are extended family.
• 2:16
  We're extended family, which means we're not the highest priority.
• 2:19
  So when Thanksgiving comes like, hey, here's what we're doing.
• 2:21
  You kids are welcome.
• 2:22
  But if you're married, do what you want to do.
• 2:24
  It's your family.
• 2:25
  You're at Thanksgiving.
• 2:26
  You decide we'd love to have you, but whatever you want to do.
• 2:29
  Christmas, hey, we love you.
• 2:30
  We'd love to see you, but you know, do what you want to do.
• 2:33
  Summer vacation, we love you.
• 2:35
  I'll rent a house big enough for everybody.
• 2:36
  That's fine with me.
• 2:38
  And if you don't want to come, I won't take offense because your family gets to do what they want to do.
• 2:43
  The big problem becomes we don't allow the next generation to have healthy families because we don't let them be a family.
• 2:51
  This is where it's really important for those of us who are older
• 2:55
  that we raise our sons to be head of households, husbands and fathers, lead their own family with their wife, not overly parent and meddle, not guilt and manipulate, not control with tears or dollars, but let them be their own family.
• 3:11
  All right.
• 3:11
  So it seems really obvious to people in our culture.
• 3:13
  We read this verse, leaving Cleve.
• 3:14
  And I think the image that most of us have when we think about what this means is what happens in a typical modern Western family where your kids grow up, they go to college, they meet their spouse, they get married, they move a couple of states away.
• 3:27
  We hang out on Christmas, maybe Thanksgiving, we go on a vacation together here or there, but it's really important to let them have lots and lots of space and that that's actually the goal.
• 3:37
  Like,
• 3:38
  If your kids are living too close, if they're too dependent, if there's some kind of enmeshment in that way, that's kind of unhealthy, that's unusual.
• 3:44
  It kind of violates the spirit of what Genesis 2 here is saying about leaving and cleaving.
• 3:49
  And then if you do things like you start calling this or acting as if this in-law is a son or daughter, that's definitely crossing a boundary.
• 3:57
  You're becoming...
• 3:59
  maybe a little bit too presumptuous or maybe toxic in those things.
• 4:04
  So what did actually happen historically, biblically, when people were reading this verse?
• 4:08
  And so there's really three categories.
• 4:10
  We're going to break this down.
• 4:12
  And you see all three being interpreted in different ways, authority, identity, and support.
• 4:15
  So when a family goes multigenerational, when a second generation starts, what is the authority structure between
• 4:22
  the Gen 1 and Gen 2.
• 4:24
  How do we think about that?
• 4:25
  What's the identity between the family of Gen 1 and Gen 2?
• 4:29
  Did Gen 2 just start a brand new family?
• 4:32
  And number three, what is the support expectations between Gen 1 and Gen 2?
• 4:36
  Does Gen 1 have an obligation to support Gen 2?
• 4:39
  Does Gen 2, when their parents are becoming older, do they have any obligation to support their parents?
• 4:44
  How do we think about those three things?
• 4:45
  And generally speaking, when you see people articulate
• 4:52
  Basically, a very simple and black and white and very clear and clean idea of all three of these things.
• 4:58
  There is zero authority between Gen 1 and Gen 2.
• 5:01
  A brand new family has been created.
• 5:03
  There's no authority structure at all.
• 5:04
  Anything beyond that is unhealthy.
• 5:07
  Identity.
• 5:08
  It's obvious.
• 5:09
  This is a new family.
• 5:10
  There really is no identity.
• 5:12
  You can decide to take some identity from that upstream generation, but that's not necessary.
• 5:16
  And in fact, that might be counterproductive.
• 5:19
  So you're a brand new family.
• 5:21
  That's important.
• 5:22
  And it's completely sort of severs and restarts the whole identity of the family.
• 5:26
  And number three, support is always voluntary.
• 5:28
  Yeah, you can support each other.
• 5:29
  There could be an inheritance.
• 5:30
  Maybe there's some good or some bad things about that, but it's completely up to you.
• 5:34
  Do you want to support your kids?
• 5:36
  As they're having kids, that's great.
• 5:38
  You don't need to.
• 5:39
  That's up to you, up to them.
• 5:40
  It's all totally voluntary.
• 5:42
  This is an extremely strange way of thinking about family, and we're going to kind of dive into this.
• 5:48
  So the pattern that this is assuming is when a new husband or when your kids get married, a brand new family is established, and they leave the family.
• 5:59
  They leave in that sense.
• 6:00
  And so since this is so early in Genesis, I would expect to see
• 6:04
  of this pattern repeated over and over again in the Bible.
• 6:07
  We're all founding everything on Scripture, and so what I would expect to see is, biblically, this happening over and over again.
• 6:14
  People getting married.
• 6:15
  As soon as they're married, they move out, they leave.
• 6:17
  They leave and cleave to this new, and they leave maybe, go a couple villages away, something like that, and they restart a family, and they just start over.
• 6:24
  Now, guys, this idea of launching your kids out in that way is completely foreign to the Bible.
• 6:32
  The idea of launching your kids at marriage, that does not happen.
• 6:36
  I can't think of a single example in Scripture in which that happens.
• 6:39
  So let's just kind of go through.
• 6:40
  If you were to just read the Bible, you don't get that impression from the very first family, Cain and Abel and Seth, are all married.
• 6:46
  They're all somehow together until, of course, Cain sins, and then he's driven out.
• 6:51
  So we don't really see the pattern yet in that.
• 6:54
  Well, that's just really early.
• 6:55
  What about the next family?
• 6:56
  Then we get to Noah.
• 6:57
  Whoa.
• 6:58
  Whoa.
• 6:59
  This is a really interesting example.
• 7:00
  Noah's given a very particular vision.
• 7:02
  He has three married sons.
• 7:05
  And did they move a few villages away?
• 7:06
  No.
• 7:07
  They're all working with their dad for 100 years to build an ark.
• 7:11
  Oh my gosh, that's so weird, so toxic.
• 7:13
  I mean, it's so strange that they wouldn't leave.
• 7:14
  Like, what are they doing working together in this multi-generational way?
• 7:18
  Why is this father exerting some kind of authority over his three sons, telling them in this vision, this vision, he should build the ark?
• 7:25
  What is he doing trying to—why is he being so domineering, so patriarchal?
• 7:30
  Okay, well, maybe there's some weird exception.
• 7:32
  I mean, there's going to be this huge flood.
• 7:34
  Maybe this is the one time you see in the Bible where this happens.
• 7:37
  Okay, so let's kind of move on, see if we can find a more healthy family that actually leaves and cleaves.
• 7:41
  Okay, now we get Abraham.
• 7:42
  Oh, yes, here's a perfect example.
• 7:45
  Abraham is actually commanded to leave his father's house.
• 7:48
  I mean, here we have the pattern, obviously, right?
• 7:51
  Well, please read carefully what actually is described in Genesis 12.
• 7:55
  We do see in Genesis 11, he's been married for a long time.
• 7:58
  We know exactly how old Abraham is when he got that call.
• 8:01
  and he was 75 years old.
• 8:03
  This is not somebody who just got married, and so we're not seeing this pattern at all.
• 8:08
  And then we're even told in Joshua why he left his father's house, which he left his father's house because his dad was an idol worshiper.
• 8:14
  So again, we're not seeing a pattern of get married and move out, get moving and start a new family.
• 8:19
  That is not what's happening here.
• 8:20
  And he is told to start a new family because God is now not the God of Terah, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but he's the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
• 8:28
  In other words, because he's...
• 8:30
  starting a completely new pattern of following the Lord, Abraham is told to leave his father's house.
• 8:36
  But it's not because he got married.
• 8:38
  It's not the Genesis 2 pattern.
• 8:39
  It's another pattern.
• 8:40
  And I believe in this pattern, by the way.
• 8:41
  We're going to look at this.
• 8:42
  If you are deciding to start a new family based on the fact that your family
• 8:49
  Upstream generations, we're not following the Lord.
• 8:52
  It is important for you to be an Abraham and Sarah kind of family.
• 8:55
  It is important for you to leave, not because of Genesis 2, but because you are starting a new family line, because you're worshiping the Lord.
• 9:02
  And so Abraham is commanded to do this, and at 75 he finally gets out and does it as an old man.
• 9:08
  Okay, well, let's get into a situation where it's all healthy.
• 9:11
  The multigenerational connections are really there.
• 9:14
  We have the example of Isaac.
• 9:16
  Okay, so clearly, if anyone is going to do this right biblical pattern, it's going to be Isaac.
• 9:22
  And so you read when Isaac and Rebecca get married, what does Isaac do?
• 9:26
  Well, he does leave and cleave.
• 9:28
  And what does that mean?
• 9:28
  We read it very specifically.
• 9:30
  As soon as he gets married to Rebecca, he leaves his father's tent and enters his own tent.
• 9:35
  And this is really the proper interpretation.
• 9:38
  And this is the way historically this has been interpreted.
• 9:40
  People would build a room onto their father's house.
• 9:43
  This is still being done in the Middle East.
• 9:45
  People would, if they're nomadic, they would leave the tent of their father and mother and start and live in their own tent.
• 9:50
  Why?
• 9:50
  Because this is what it's saying to literally do.
• 9:53
  Like, this is how people were reading this.
• 9:54
  I'll read it to you guys.
• 9:55
  Okay.
• 9:55
  In Genesis 2, 23, it says, In other words, what it's describing there is the sexual union
• 10:13
  needs an arena of privacy for them to become one.
• 10:16
  That's what it's describing, and that's what you see repeatedly played out in these passages.
• 10:20
  So Isaac is with his father for the rest of his life.
• 10:23
  Is this a failure to launch?
• 10:24
  What's Isaac's problem?
• 10:25
  Why doesn't he start his own family?
• 10:27
  You know, a brand new family.
• 10:28
  No, no, no.
• 10:29
  He is a part of his father Abraham's family.
• 10:31
  Abraham left Terah's family because he is worshiping now Yahweh, but because Abraham and Isaac are worshiping the same God, Isaac stays in the multigenerational family of his father Abraham.
• 10:42
  Now, okay, you get to Jacob, and you're like, okay, finally.
• 10:45
  Now we got a guy who's launching.
• 10:46
  He launches, and then he gets tied up in this weird situation with his father-in-law, Laban, and then he leaves that.
• 10:52
  So clearly here you have a great example of a leaving Cleveland situation.
• 10:56
  Well, again, read it very carefully, please.
• 10:59
  So Jacob was not married when he left his father's house, right?
• 11:02
  We know why he left, because there was a dispute with his brother.
• 11:04
  He was about to get killed, so he leaves.
• 11:06
  He goes to his mother's family, and he gets there to Laban's house, and then he does get married.
• 11:11
  And then what does he do?
• 11:12
  Well, he immediately leaves and cleaves, right?
• 11:14
  No, no, no.
• 11:15
  He works for his father-in-law for 14 years in exchange for Leah and for his wife, Rachel.
• 11:21
  So you're not seeing this pattern.
• 11:23
  He does eventually leave Laban's house, thank goodness, because Laban was taking advantage of him.
• 11:28
  Laban was constantly changing his wages over and over again in order to really oppress him for the sake of his family.
• 11:33
  And so Jacob's like, I got to provide for my own family.
• 11:36
  This is incredibly unhealthy.
• 11:37
  And so there does come a time, there's lots of times where you should leave your family
• 11:40
  Not because you got married, not because of Genesis 2, but because there's something weird going on between the generations, and you need to get out of there.
• 11:47
  And so Jacob does.
• 11:48
  Now he's got his family, and now he's left Laban.
• 11:51
  What does he do with his 12 sons?
• 11:53
  Again, we got so much information about how this is being done in the book of Genesis.
• 11:57
  He's got 12 sons.
• 11:58
  What do they do?
• 11:59
  All of them leave?
• 12:00
  No.
• 12:01
  We have lots of detail about what was going on between Jacob and his 12 sons.
• 12:04
  He's constantly exerting authority over these 12 sons,
• 12:07
  as they're married, as they're having their own families, right?
• 12:11
  He's telling them to go back.
• 12:12
  Remember the whole story about commanding his sons to go down to Egypt.
• 12:16
  So they're under the direction of their father.
• 12:18
  Is this unbiblical?
• 12:20
  Like, is there something strange going on here that we have finally gotten over?
• 12:25
  Are they violating Genesis 2 over and over again?
• 12:27
  And of course, we could go through the entire Bible and do this.
• 12:30
  And I'm just telling you guys, I'm challenging you guys.
• 12:32
  Is this a...
• 12:33
  common pattern.
• 12:34
  Because if this is the way that pastors are interpreting this, I'm not seeing this pattern anywhere in Scripture.
• 12:39
  We're reading into the Bible our preferred way, our hyper- individualism.
• 12:45
  Sociologists have said that we live in the most hyper-individualistic society
• 12:50
  in human history.
• 12:51
  And so we think we can just leave our families of origin, and there is no real consequence to that, because to us, it's just promoting our individuality.
• 13:03
  We need to leave the connections.
• 13:06
  And we also have a sociologist called the assumption of stability.
• 13:08
  In other words, when you do do this, when you leave your family in this way and move a couple states away and get a
• 13:15
  you're probably going to be okay.
• 13:16
  You're not going to starve to death, but you guys have to understand that for most times in human history, if you left your family in the way that we interpret this verse, that would be a death sentence.
• 13:25
  This is the reason why in the Gospels, when Jesus is telling the story about the prodigal son, people were very familiar with this story.
• 13:31
  If you decided, I'm leaving my father's house, what happens?
• 13:35
  He starts to starve to death out there.
• 13:36
  People were in an incredibly fragile state financially, and they were subsistence farmers for the most part.
• 13:44
  And so as they were doing this, if you did not inherit...
• 13:47
  some kind of support from your family, from your upstream generations, whether land, some kind of assets, some kind of connections, your network, whatever, then you are in an incredibly dangerous situation.
• 13:58
  Now, today, we don't have that dangerous situation.
• 14:00
  We live in one of the most prosperous, stable,
• 14:03
  times in human history, and it is starting to change.
• 14:05
  And I think this is one of the reasons why I really want to push back a lot harder on this interpretation, because what's happening is you have a lot of parents who have lived in a very prosperous time saying, I did this, I launched, we did great.
• 14:18
  Why can't you do this?
• 14:18
  Why can't everybody do this in every culture?
• 14:21
  Let's all just launch and move a couple states away, move a few cities away, start your own family line.
• 14:26
  That's what we're supposed to do.
• 14:27
  That's the ideal, according to Genesis 2.
• 14:29
  And again, you guys, that is not the ideal, according to Genesis 2.
• 14:32
  We're reading this into this idea.
• 14:34
  So we need to go through these three different elements—authority, identity, and support.
• 14:40
  How does the Bible actually talk about these things?
• 14:42
  Now, number one, the authority.
• 14:44
  Yes, I do believe that what Mark Driscoll mentioned there is true about authority.
• 14:48
  I do not think it's appropriate.
• 14:50
  for Gen 1 to exert authority over Gen 2.
• 14:53
  Well, you might say, well, what about Jacob, that example where he's constantly exerting authority over his sons?
• 14:58
  Or, you know, what is happening in these other situations?
• 15:00
  And one of the things you guys have to understand about ancient times, and this is still true today, that there are arenas of authority outside the family that subsume the family.
• 15:09
  And this is very common in multigenerational families.
• 15:12
  Examples of that is a family business.
• 15:14
  If you're a part of the Cathy family and you're a part of the whole Chick-fil-A, they own the Chick-fil-A business, or the Green family who owns Hobby Lobby, you're a part of these multigenerational families and that family owns assets.
• 15:25
  When you enter into the arena of Hobby Lobby or the arena of Chick-fil-A, all of a sudden, these authority structures persist, even if you get married.
• 15:34
  If I decide as the next generation to say, I'm going to be a part of my family's
• 15:40
  multi-generational assets, our family business, and my father is still the CEO of that business, still the owner of that business, still owns most of the shares of that business, then when I enter into that arena, of course, I'm under his authority.
• 15:51
  He can tell me, hey, son, I know you're 35 years old, but I need you to fly to
• 15:55
  Atlanta and speak at this event because I'm your boss, right?
• 15:59
  And Mark Driscoll is actually doing this, right?
• 16:01
  He's got a family kind of ministry where I presume he has some authority.
• 16:06
  There's some authority structure there that when his son-in-law and his daughter are part of that, they are submitting to a larger or a different authority structure.
• 16:14
  And it's important to say that this is pretty uncommon today, right?
• 16:17
  In the Western context, most of us don't work with and
• 16:26
  And I think that this is something we should really consider if we can have healthy relationships between generations.
• 16:33
  If you have an amazing connection with your kids and you want to start a ministry or start a business and create another arena of authority, then, of course, in that arena of authority, you're going to have some authority.
• 16:43
  And this is the arena of authority that was just a part of ancient living.
• 16:46
  When that father of the prodigal son has his older son,
• 16:50
  Maybe his older son was married.
• 16:51
  We don't know.
• 16:52
  But nothing magical would have happened when he got married.
• 16:55
  He would still be working for his dad.
• 16:57
  And so this was the normal way that people lived back then.
• 17:00
  And so these arenas of authority are important.
• 17:03
  That does not mean that if my son is working for my business, I can then go and tell him how to parent his kids.
• 17:08
  I can then tell him how to treat his wife.
• 17:11
  I can give advice or we can have conversations.
• 17:13
  But I have no authority in that arena.
• 17:15
  He has total authority over the arena of his own family, his own household.
• 17:18
  Right.
• 17:18
  including if he says, dad, I don't want to work for you anymore.
• 17:21
  I want to leave.
• 17:22
  I can't say, well, son, I have authority over you.
• 17:24
  You're not allowed to leave.
• 17:24
  You have to work for me.
• 17:26
  Like that's not going to happen.
• 17:27
  Like he can, he can leave at that sense.
• 17:29
  So from that sense, authority does change.
• 17:32
  I have a lot bigger beef with this second category.
• 17:34
  I really don't like how we assume identity has to reset every generation.
• 17:39
  So Josh Howerton, who is a pastor, I have a lot of respect for,
• 17:43
  He said something very similar to Driscoll about this, but he really pushes on this question of identity.
• 17:49
  So listen to what Josh says about how identity is severed generationally.
• 17:53
  What everybody needs to understand, let's go back to Genesis.
• 17:55
  We have a theology of how we should and should not treat our in-laws.
• 17:58
  The book of Genesis says what happens when you get married is a man shall what?
• 18:02
  A man shall leave.
• 18:04
  What Genesis says is when somebody gets married...
• 18:06
  They just left their parents.
• 18:08
  They left that family.
• 18:10
  They started their own family.
• 18:11
  What some people will do is I've heard well-meaning parents say this, oh, our sons get married.
• 18:18
  We're adding a daughter to our family.
• 18:20
  Dear sir or dear madam, no, you are not.
• 18:24
  That is not what's happening.
• 18:25
  What will happen when Eliana gets married, we will not be adding a son to our family.
• 18:29
  Our daughter will be leaving our family, starting her own new family.
• 18:35
  And in that moment,
• 18:36
  we will become extended family.
• 18:38
  And then the rules change.
• 18:40
  At that point, it's me and Janice's job to understand we are not the priority anymore.
• 18:44
  It is her job to prioritize her immediate family over her extended family.
• 18:49
  And that may mean she needs to set some boundaries.
• 18:52
  All right, let's dive into this.
• 18:53
  So this idea that well-meaning parents say, hey, we're adding a daughter to our family, we're adding a son to our family, isn't that amazing?
• 19:00
  Look, that idea...
• 19:04
  historically and biblically, is totally sound.
• 19:08
  The problem, you guys, is I think he's reading the authority conversation into that.
• 19:13
  Oh, we have a son or daughter.
• 19:14
  That means that they're under our authority.
• 19:16
  No, no, no.
• 19:16
  That's not what they're saying.
• 19:17
  They're saying there is a continuous identity.
• 19:20
  And part of the problem, you guys, is that when we hear the word son or daughter in our context, in our culture, we tend to think of somebody who's young and under authority.
• 19:28
  Historically, those were like positions in the family.
• 19:32
  The son was the heir of the family, or was somebody who represented the father.
• 19:37
  Jesus talks about this.
• 19:38
  Jesus' favorite title for himself was a son.
• 19:41
  The daughter was like a treasured woman within the family.
• 19:44
  She was not someone who was eight years old and under her dad's authority.
• 19:48
  That's not how these words are read.
• 19:50
  Of course, they do mean those things as well, but this is a term of affection between generations.
• 19:57
  I mean, from what Josh said, I would think that maybe you should stop calling your biological son or daughter son, daughter when they get married, right?
• 20:04
  Right.
• 20:05
  So I don't really understand why you wouldn't extend that affection.
• 20:09
  And you don't have to call them that.
• 20:10
  I think people have their own cultural ways of thinking about that.
• 20:12
  I'm just saying, you're not going to get that from Genesis 2.
• 20:16
  We actually have a book of the Bible, you guys, where the word daughter is used more than in any other place in Scripture.
• 20:21
  So the book of Ruth, the word daughter is used 17 times.
• 20:24
  Now, if daughter cannot include a daughter-in-law, this word daughter should not be used, because that's primarily what's happening here.
• 20:32
  Naomi says,
• 20:33
  is in this family with her daughter-in-law, and she's constantly calling Ruth daughter over and over again.
• 20:38
  This adult woman, what is she thinking?
• 20:41
  This adult woman has gotten married to her son.
• 20:43
  Yeah, the son has died, but why is she presuming to call Ruth her daughter?
• 20:49
  This is so common, you guys.
• 20:51
  Again, this is common everywhere in the world.
• 20:53
  We have a unique hang-up in Western cultures because we do not believe in multigenerational families.
• 20:58
  Because we've destroyed this idea through hyper-individualism, and we've read all of this baggage into Genesis 2, we think that there's no identity relationship that happens between generations.
• 21:08
  And so every single generation hits the reset button.
• 21:11
  We don't want to use the word son or daughter.
• 21:12
  We just want to make sure it's a brand new family.
• 21:14
  There's no connection, no identity, no multigenerational connections.
• 21:18
  And I'm just telling you guys, this is so destructive.
• 21:21
  Do you know that almost no one can name their great-grandparents, right?
• 21:25
  Something like less than 4% of people can even name the first names of their eight great-grandparents.
• 21:30
  Because, you know, some of us knew some of our great-grandparents, but we don't really know their names because they have no relevance to us at all.
• 21:37
  Right.
• 21:38
  today because we just believe in this really bad idea of just hitting the reset button every single generation and it is killing us you guys it is making such weak families the trees with the deepest roots grow the highest we need deep family identity
• 21:53
  There are so many genealogies in the Bible because God cared a lot about the generational story he was telling and the generational connections.
• 22:00
  He wanted people to be able to trace their family lineage through Scripture.
• 22:04
  Your genealogy is really important.
• 22:06
  So again, this idea that you're giving your kids a gift—
• 22:10
  by destroying any identity between generations and really removing familial language between generations in order to maximally allow for this new generation to be completely on its own, to have a sense of total autonomy and total authority in that sense.
• 22:25
  That is really hurting us.
• 22:26
  And where is it hurting us the most?
• 22:27
  I think identity is a big part of it.
• 22:29
  But part of this, you guys, is that we feel like there's no obligation to support each other between generations anymore.
• 22:36
  And I think this is so sad.
• 22:37
  Yeah.
• 22:38
  It's so unfortunate that we are not assuming that we're going to receive support from our parents as we have kids.
• 22:45
  It's really unfortunate that there is not an assumption of support going upstream to our parents as they're getting older.
• 22:51
  We are really in the middle of an experiment that is just a disaster.
• 22:54
  I mean, Social Security, this decision to say, hey, we want to make sure that we're caring for the vulnerable elderly people.
• 23:01
  I don't know if when Social Security was first passed, they realized that they were destroying the strongest incentive that was ever created in human history for a parent to ensure that their children have an economically viable future.
• 23:16
  What happened historically—
• 23:19
  As I'm raising my kids, as I'm building my relationship with them, as I'm thinking about their education and their future connections, I'm constantly aware that my life and my wife's life will eventually be in their hands.
• 23:30
  That their ability to thrive financially is going to determine my quality of life as I get into my final season of life.
• 23:36
  This was just normal historically.
• 23:38
  And so this created this enormous incentive between generations.
• 23:41
  This is just one example I'm giving.
• 23:43
  I can give so many examples of where this has been severed.
• 23:45
  But it's so sad now because now that incentive is gone.
• 23:49
  I'm like, hey, my kids, if they...
• 23:51
  If they're able to launch, if they're struggling, that's not on me.
• 23:55
  I'm going to be fine.
• 23:55
  I'm just going to pull my Social Security.
• 23:57
  I'm going to get my pension.
• 23:58
  I don't really need to worry about that.
• 24:00
  I've got my investments or whatever, my 401K.
• 24:02
  I've got my own means of providing for myself, and therefore I don't really have nearly as strong of incentive to say in my kids' 20s and their 30s and their 40s.
• 24:10
  I'm constantly thinking about how can I help them?
• 24:12
  How can I support them?
• 24:13
  This is also true about, you know, with our daughters in terms of raising the next generation.
• 24:17
  Like this desire to see, I really want to make sure my kids are thriving as parents.
• 24:22
  This sort of health that happened between generations where you'd live.
• 24:24
  And that was the village of ancient times.
• 24:26
  We talk about it takes a village, but the village was primarily made up of extended family clans, aunts and uncles and cousins.
• 24:33
  but especially grandparents and great-grandparents and great-aunts and great-uncles.
• 24:36
  And so we were all constantly trying to help each other as we were raising the next generation and we're thinking about how to support each other.
• 24:42
  This was such a stable and prosperous way to think about family.
• 24:46
  And now we're just like hitting this reset button every generation and we're giving up on marriage now.
• 24:51
  It's just, it's like this enormous decline into the destruction of the family because we have decided to destroy the multi-generational family team and replace it with hyper-individualized men and women
• 25:02
  who get married, and oftentimes those marriages are extraordinarily unstable.
• 25:06
  And we need to be really careful, you guys, not to read this destructive way of thinking about family in the Bible.
• 25:11
  So if you guys are interested in understanding how the Bible actually articulates this multigenerational family vision, please go to familyteams.com slash transform.
• 25:20
  We'll start to give you guys like a little mini course on how this works.
• 25:23
  We really think we need to work hard as Christians to reestablish our understanding of the biblical multigenerational family team.