Latest / The Family Teams Podcast / Is It Unbiblical To Kick Your Kids Out At 18?

Transcript

Is It Unbiblical To Kick Your Kids Out At 18? · The Family Teams Podcast

0:00
is it unbiblical to kick your kids out at 18?
0:04
So if you've seen a family, they're like, we just want to follow Jesus.
0:08
And let's say they have five kids, and at 18, they're just like, you're gone, and you're gone.
0:13
It's like, there are a lot of people who do this.
0:16
And April and I kind of watch on with some degree of shock and horror.
0:24
And these are people that are very faithful in terms of their devotion to Christ.
0:29
We're like, what is going on here?
0:31
And so I wanted to dive into this.
0:32
I wrote a little essay, and I got two video clips that I found really inspirational around this topic that I want to share with you, April, and for those of you guys watching.
0:42
So I'll start reading just sections of this, and then we can interact around it.
0:45
So is it unbiblical to kick your kids out at 18?
0:49
We live under a strange collective agreement in our culture.
0:53
When a child turns 18, something supposedly magical happens.
0:58
Parents across the country believe their responsibility shifts, that they've been let off the hook.
1:03
But where did this idea come from?
1:04
And more importantly, does the Bible actually support it?
1:09
These are questions worth asking.
1:10
If you were to study scripture to discover what a mother or father's actual responsibility is, you wouldn't find it tied to an arbitrary age or governmental milestones.
1:22
You'd find something far more beautiful and far more demanding.
1:26
So that's kind of introduction, like something's happened.
1:30
There's almost a consensus around this.
1:32
Doesn't mean that everybody treats their kids the same at 18, but I would say that what's
1:36
collective is something dramatically shifts.
1:41
That's almost been my universal experience.
1:43
Like at that birthday, something happened.
1:46
So I want to talk about what that is.
1:47
All right.
1:47
So this is the next section.
1:49
The myth of 18.
1:51
The obsession with 18 is remarkably recent.
1:54
It didn't come from the Bible.
1:56
for most of English common law in American history, 21 was considered the age of adulthood.
2:02
Even in those simpler times with those simpler economies, that was the consensus.
2:07
But even then,
2:09
we're simply talking about what some legislator decided, not what scripture prescribes.
2:15
So how did it shift from 21 to 18?
2:19
Thank the Vietnam War.
2:21
I didn't know this.
2:22
I had to do a
2:23
deep dive on this.
2:23
I was kind of surprised.
2:25
In the 1970s, there was a campaign to lower the voting
2:28
age from 21 to 18.
2:30
The rationale was straightforward.
2:31
If you're old enough to die for your country,
2:32
you should be old enough to vote.
2:34
It's a reasonable argument for voting rights,
2:36
but here's what's strange.
2:38
This political decision somehow rewrote the way millions of parents
2:44
think about the nature of their responsibility to their children.
2:48
That's not a small thing.
2:49
A constitutional amendment tied to military conscription became the invisible boundary that convinced an entire generation of parents they could stop parenting.
3:00
So I don't know if you've heard that.
3:02
That was a surprise to me, like where that came from.
3:04
Anything that's stirring up so far?
3:06
Well, it also coincides with graduation from high school in our current system.
3:11
Typically, a kid 17, 18 may graduate from high school.
3:15
I do think that because of our school system, which is another like extra biblical system that is set up, that we are culturally bound to, that something has to be figured out post high school.
3:32
So I find myself when I'm talking about this age, sometimes I'm not even thinking of 18.
3:36
I'm thinking of post high school.
3:38
So I do think that it is interesting the way culture has set us up this way.
3:43
Everything with the military draft, the right to vote and the school system, I think, are things that are kind of outside of Scripture, which doesn't mean they're necessarily inherently wrong or anything.
3:56
It's just that's how the lens through which we view all of these things.
4:01
Yes.
4:02
Yeah.
4:03
Yeah.
4:03
It's so crazy how I think the school system in some ways really creates an even larger dilemma for families.
4:11
I think that's starting to shift because of people taking more and more responsibility for their kids' education.
4:17
But I'll just read this next section because it kind of relates to that.
4:19
It says, the real problem underneath.
4:21
I think the obsession with 18 reveals something deeper.
4:24
Many parents are looking for permission to abdicate their responsibility.
4:29
This is one of the things I've noticed is like, it's not like they're saying, oh, no, it's 18.
4:33
I had so much more to give my kids.
4:35
I wanted to be a team, but I guess I had to let them go because there's some magical thing in the Bible or in the Constitution.
4:42
No, that's not what I hear.
4:43
It's like I hear people saying, yes, the kids are gone.
4:46
Don't come back.
4:48
Don't let the door hit you on the way.
4:49
I mean, not that they don't love their kids, but they feel like I don't like bearing this responsibility on my shoulders, and I am so glad to be rid of it.
4:59
That's what I hear from so many parents.
5:01
Anyway, so if we're honest, this desire didn't start at 18.
5:07
It started much earlier.
5:08
In our culture, parents began handing their children to professionals, not at 18, but at five or three or sometimes even six months.
5:15
We've outsourced education, development, formation to institutions and experts and all while telling ourselves we're still the primary shapers of our children's lives.
5:23
The idea that a parent is intentionally, comprehensively raising their child, that's become the exception, not the rule.
5:29
So when 18 arrives, parents seize on it as the moment they can finally be free.
5:33
And by free, I mean free from obligation, free from responsibility.
5:36
We've bought into a vision of freedom that's mostly about a freedom from,
5:40
from duty, from constraints, from anyone else's needs.
5:43
This is one of the greatest destroyers of the modern family.
5:46
But what if we stopped obsessing over 18?
5:48
What if we looked at scripture and asked, what are the actual milestones that matter?
5:51
One of the things I love doing just as a thought experiment,
5:54
I encourage everybody to do this all the time,
5:57
is if you could just sort of erase from your brain
6:01
what you currently think about something like this
6:02
and just said, I imagine I just was like,
6:05
I have no idea what my responsibility as a parent is.
6:09
Let me just read the Bible.
6:10
I don't have no idea what my responsibility
6:12
towards my child's education is.
6:14
If you just read the Bible,
6:16
what would you conclude from that?
6:18
And so I think it's a really important thought experiment.
6:20
That's really what I do to try to go back to first principles
6:23
to try to figure out whether I've been brainwashed
6:27
by something that's happened culturally that's actually not biblical.
6:29
And this is an area where
6:31
I just think, frankly, people have been totally brainwashed by the things that you mentioned.
6:37
So we're going to look at some milestones that if I was just to study the Bible asking this
6:42
question, some things that I would conclude about my responsibility as a parent, as my child ages.
6:49
So we're going to get into that in a second.
6:50
But yeah, anything else on this sort of
6:53
of desire to be free of this burdensome responsibility.
7:00
Yeah, I think it kind of coincides with the belief that us Americans have about retirement
7:09
and retirement age.
7:12
And so we've been kind of brainwashed to think that there will come a time when you can completely
7:19
stop contributing to society and you can go sit on a beach.
7:25
You deserve and have earned the right
7:27
to go sit on a beach somewhere for the last 20, 30 years of your life and, you know, see your kids
7:36
maybe at the holidays or, you know, have them come down to the beach with you every once in a while
7:41
or something.
7:42
But you're no longer responsible for them and their stupid decisions.
7:46
Or for
7:49
even necessarily helping them out with roadblocks they're facing in there as they grow into it's
7:56
like a virtue as a parent that you let your kid figure things out on their own or they need to
8:06
figure out this this hard life and they're going to learn from the you know life will teach them
8:13
these things and it's not your job to do that.
8:16
And so you send them off into the world and, um,
8:22
to see how, how they do with the, everything from like figuring out practical things to, uh,
8:29
spiritually, like they're going to face temptations are going to face decisions down the road that
8:34
they are going to live the lifelong consequences of decisions they're making.
8:39
Um, there's all kinds
8:41
And then just like decisions about where to live or where to get a job when they graduate from college.
8:46
And, you know, these things that are just assumed, the parents kind of no longer, they're like, whew, done with the hard thing of making those decisions.
8:57
Any health problems they have or any, you know, consequences that they're going to face because of their decisions, they're going to have to bear the brunt of that.
9:08
Right.
9:09
I think some people bear responsibility differently.
9:12
And for some people, I would say just frankly, religious people struggle with this topic way more than secular people.
9:20
Like when I talk to religious people, by religious, I mean people whose identity is deeply caught up in their self-perception as a good person.
9:33
And they're going to be judged based on very specific places where they have been told they are responsible.
9:41
People that carry responsibility with that religious spirit, it is exhausting.
9:47
And they do get worn out by this.
9:49
And so I find that sometimes when I look at a totally secular family and they're like, I love my kids.
9:56
Of course, I'm going to love my kids.
9:57
AT is nothing big.
9:59
Like, you know, they don't feel the sort of religious, I'm going to be judged by God.
10:02
You know, like I got to find the moment when I know when God will no longer, you know, hold me accountable for what my children are going to do.
10:10
Like you said, they're stupid decisions.
10:12
And so secular people don't ever feel that pressure necessarily.
10:14
They don't feel like God's going to judge them for some responsibility towards their children.
10:18
And so they're sort of freer to sort of be at a more heart level on these things.
10:25
And I think that religious people, sometimes they will choose to see parenting through that lens of responsibility and judgment.
10:34
I'm not saying all Christians.
10:35
I'm just saying that this is a pattern that I've noticed.
10:38
And so I think that when we're talking about how you carry responsibility,
10:45
If this is something that you get excited about, like, wow, I get to, responsibility are the realms in which I get to see the kingdom thrive.
10:53
And so if, you know, and you see in the parable of the talents, when you succeed at bearing responsibility well, what you get is more responsibility.
11:04
A lot of people, like that does not fit our American vision of freedom or retirement, like you described.
11:10
like we are fighting to how small can I possibly create the realm of my responsibility?
11:17
How much
11:18
can I abdicate before I can be accused of committing a sin?
11:22
Because I want that realm
11:23
to be as small as possible.
11:25
I'm saying that that mentality is to me very aligned with
11:30
wanting to know the moment I can get out from underneath his responsibility.
11:34
So I would say
11:34
that's one class of problems people have with this.
11:37
The other class of problems that people
11:40
have with this that I've noticed is some people are very controlling and they really can't trust
11:46
themselves with ongoing nebulous connections with their children because, you know, they will
11:55
infantilize their child all the way to the moment they turn 18.
11:59
And they're like, okay,
12:00
I need to let them go.
12:02
Like, I just want to control everything they do.
12:07
I feel every little
12:08
thing they say or do reflects on me, and I need to control it and control, control, control.
12:13
And then the moment they hit this magic number, I can finally stop controlling them.
12:19
And, you know,
12:20
in some cases, I think that that level of liberation is actually really healthy for kids.
12:27
what's unhealthy is that parents' obsession with control or their misunderstanding of
12:32
how to wield responsibility when you don't wield 100% authority.
12:36
I think that's the other side of
12:37
this that I've noticed.
12:39
And if you are a control freak, then having somebody tell you to back off
12:45
is actually really important at some point so that you don't infantilize your child or
12:51
inappropriately control them and destroy the relationship through that means.
12:54
But I just want
12:55
to make clear, the problem is you need to learn how to steward fractional responsibility.
13:01
And this
13:01
is a huge problem for some people.
13:03
They either need to be a hundred percent responsible and a
13:05
hundred percent in control or a zero percent responsible and zero percent in control.
13:11
They
13:11
don't know how to like flex.
13:13
And like in the church, guess what?
13:15
This is the way it works.
13:16
You have some responsibility, but it's not total.
13:20
In your city, you have some responsibility,
13:22
but not total in your, in your job, you have some responsibility, like this idea of like,
13:28
I need to be able to carry fractional responsibility well.
13:32
And so, and this is what I
13:33
think is the vision for what happens with children is it doesn't go from a hundred to zero the minute
13:38
some magical age hits, it does slowly begin to reduce.
13:43
And, and I think that that's, man,
13:45
you have to learn before they turn 18, how to handle that reduction of responsibility without
13:53
saying, okay, well, whatever they just did, like if it was yesterday before their birthday,
13:58
I would, I felt a hundred percent accountable, but that magical birthday happened.
14:01
I saw them
14:02
blow the candles out and I looked at the day in the calendar and they just committed a crime and
14:05
that's on them, you know, whatever it is like that doesn't reflect on me.
14:09
I mean, that's,
14:10
that's an extreme way of describing it, but I feel like that's kind of what's going on in the
14:14
part of a very controlling person.
14:16
And man, you've got to be careful of that because that is so
14:19
tough on the family.
14:21
If you're going to be multi-generational as a family, you cannot
14:23
think that way.
14:24
And we're going to get into the positive or the ideal of what we see the
14:29
scripture actually advocating for in this case.
14:31
But yeah, any other thoughts on how that works?
14:34
Well, I think that some ways we've run into this practically have been very eye-opening to what
14:40
the world thinks.
14:42
And for example, we had one kid who got really sick right around just like
14:48
weeks after their 18th birthday.
14:50
And I remember going to the doctor with them and fever just like
14:55
cut really out of it and not, not together, not with it, you know, and the doctor would not
15:03
address me at all.
15:05
And because my kid was 18, um, he would only communicate with that kid
15:11
and say, you know, ask all the questions about their health history and their, their vaccination
15:19
history and all of these things.
15:20
And that kid didn't know the answer to all those things
15:26
and kept looking to me to answer everything.
15:29
And I'm looking at the doctor like,
15:30
oh, are you, are you going to let me answer these questions?
15:33
Are you going to believe what I'm
15:34
saying?
15:35
Or do you somehow all of a sudden it put me on the other side of this fence,
15:38
like I was some enemy coming in there to twist things or be dishonest about something.
15:45
And they
15:46
would only believe the child.
15:48
And it's like people just because they turn 18 does not mean they
15:52
magically all of a sudden completely understand their health history and like know all of these
15:57
things.
15:58
It's a false number that can mean different things to different people.
16:02
You can have
16:03
some kids who are, you know, super responsible at 15 and can do all these things.
16:08
And,
16:09
and, you know, there's just different giftings that come out in different ways.
16:12
And
16:13
I think we just put way too much weight on the number 18 and assume way too much about what the
16:22
child can handle at that point in time.
16:26
If you're willing to have this conversation,
16:28
it does become, it opens quite a can of worms because it infiltrates into a lot of different
16:34
areas of life.
16:35
And, but I think that desire that a lot of parents have to abdicate, whether it's
16:40
for their own, like I'm tired, I'm done, I've done my duty off to retirement thing, or whether it's
16:49
more brokenness or things like that in the way, I think it's just a false number for lots of reasons.
16:57
and I think that's why we're having this conversation.
16:59
Yeah, it's really tough.
17:01
Yeah, part of what's really interesting about family
17:02
is that family is so small
17:05
that you can know individually each child
17:08
and the parents should have the wisdom to say,
17:11
oh yeah, you need a lot of freedom at 15.
17:15
Wow, at 18, you need a lot of restraint.
17:19
Like you need a lot of help.
17:20
Like you're a late bloomer, let me help you out.
17:23
Like it's okay, right?
17:25
But part of what has happened with this sort of industrialized everything, education, the way we think about, like, all these milestones have to be in sync because they fit the, and what's fascinating is, like, I'm always very suspicious of this thing that Eisenhower warned us about, the military-industrial complex.
17:44
Basically, this weird way in which the military, in a secret sense, sort of can dominate a society.
17:51
But here's an example that's really pernicious, that there was a consensus that 21 was a closer date to be paying attention to.
18:01
Again, that's not an absolute date, but it's a date that was more realistic in a lot of cultures.
18:06
And that used to be the case here.
18:09
But because we needed to send and draft young men and send them off to war, we made all these changes for the sake of.
18:17
And so you're having an awkward conversation with the doctor because the military needed, you know, more more grist for the mill in Vietnam.
18:26
It's like what a weird reality.
18:30
And, you know, again, this is why I just want to really emphasize this simple principle that the larger the state gets, the weaker the family gets.
18:40
That is a principle you can take to the bank every time.
18:43
When the state gets stronger and louder, makes more and more cultural decisions, the family gets weaker and weaker and weaker.
18:50
And this is why as individual families, we must fight back against the ways in which the state is infringing on our jurisdiction.
18:58
And one of the elements of our jurisdiction as families is how to think about our children and our responsibility to our children.
19:05
The state does not get a vote on that at all.
19:08
And now there are times in which there are really unhealthy families when you need to make an exception, right, to the rule and allow authorities to come into a family to disrupt a terribly abusive situation.
19:21
OK, that's fine.
19:23
But that does not mean that that should be the norm.
19:25
OK, you guys understand the difference between the exception and the norm.
19:27
The norm should be families are healthy and families are making these decisions as families, not the state makes a decision for 100 percent of families.
19:34
That is not healthy.
19:36
But we've kind of gotten to that place and we've got to push back.
19:40
And so.
19:40
All right.
19:40
I want to play for you a quick clip.
19:42
This is by a business kind of coach, Myron Golden.
19:47
He made this statement and it went really viral on all the all the all the places.
19:53
and I saw it over and over again.
19:55
And it was interesting.
19:56
And there was almost like a collective,
19:58
what?
19:59
We can have this conversation?
20:01
That happened when he released this clip.
20:04
So there's two clips I want to play for you
20:05
during this conversation,
20:06
but this is the first one.
20:07
Because I think he begins to tee up this question
20:09
about what does the Bible say
20:11
about when responsibility begins to shift?
20:14
So I'll play this for you now.
20:16
Imagine a world where
20:17
instead of kicking our children out when they're 18,
20:19
they come to work with us in our family business.
20:20
And then when they get married,
20:22
We give them a house so they don't have a mortgage and a family business so they don't have to find a job.
20:27
And then we teach them an aspect of the family business so that when we die, instead of just giving them money, we give them a mindset, we give them a skill set, we give them a tool set that they can perpetuate the family's will instead of decimating the family's will.
20:41
See, we want our children to leave when they're 18.
20:42
You know why?
20:42
Because we're Americans.
20:43
But the Bible says that then shall a man leave his father and his mother and cleave unto his wife, and they twain shall be one flesh.
20:52
So biblically, a person leaves home when they get married.
20:55
Oh, you mean I have to put up with them for that many more years?
20:57
The reason you have to put up with them is because you didn't train them up.
20:59
If you train them up, you don't have to put up with them.
21:02
But imagine that as a world where your children don't have to start from scratch.
21:05
Imagine if your parents would have set you up so you didn't have to start from scratch.
21:08
Imagine how much further ahead you'd be.
21:09
Well, guess what?
21:10
As my good friend Dr. Sonja always says, you may not come from a wealthy family, but a wealthy family should come from you.
21:15
All right, mic drop.
21:17
What's that to you from that, April?
21:19
Yeah, wow.
21:20
That's incredible.
21:20
Cool.
21:22
Well, he's laying out there the argument for leaving home at marriage instead of at 18.
21:29
Yes.
21:31
So that's fascinating.
21:32
He doesn't differentiate between sons and daughters there, which I think is interesting.
21:36
Yeah.
21:36
I know we've had our conversations about whether it should be different for sons versus daughters.
21:42
and then just the idea of like giving your kids resources I think has become so skewed by the
21:52
the uber uber wealthy people so it's like you picture that and you picture trust fund babies
21:57
and then the spoiled druggies like wasting the money and then you hear like family business you
22:04
hear the family business and you picture uncle so-and-so and uncle so-and-so who no longer speak
22:08
to each other because they were running the family business and had to fight over it.
22:12
So that's what you picture family business being like.
22:14
And then you picture your kid not going off to college, but working, like working right
22:20
away.
22:20
It's just like, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait, what are you talking about?
22:23
So the things he's, he's suggesting are mindsets.
22:27
He uses the word mindset and it is like, yes, that is, that is a mindset that is a
22:33
multi-generational mindset.
22:36
And you have to train your kids.
22:38
You have to believe something so deeply that you are training your kids.
22:42
You're believing it yourself that you're passing it on to them so that they know how to handle relational conflict.
22:49
They know how to work through problems.
22:51
They know how to make compromises.
22:52
They've developed their skill sets so that there is room for them in a particular business.
22:57
They have an understanding of stewardship and how to manage things that they've been given to steward.
23:03
um so i feel like god really does set us up economic like his economy sets us up for living
23:09
this way but um like he said us americans we we have such a different view of this that and all
23:16
we see is like the negative side of these possibilities because there's so few people
23:21
that are trying this or following this that we have very little uh examples in front of us yes
23:28
And the three biblical milestones that I've found, and Myron talks about two of them here, are
23:34
Most Christian parents feel like their homes are stuck in survival mode.
23:38
Rushing, reading, drifting apart.
23:40
The issue isn't effort.
23:42
It's the blueprint.
23:43
Culture says build your family around individuals.
23:46
Scripture says build a team.
23:49
That's why we wrote a free course called Five Days to Transform Your Family into a Team.
23:54
Each day gives you one short teaching and one simple step around mission, rhythm, and unity.
24:01
It's free and takes just a few minutes a day.
24:03
Start today at familyteams.com slash transform.
24:09
Marriage, economic independence, and death.
24:12
Those are the three milestones that multi-generational families should be obsessing over,
24:16
not some arbitrary age of 18.
24:18
Death.
24:20
I'll talk about it.
24:21
He doesn't talk about death.
24:22
I want to talk about that in a minute because I think that that's a big milestone in a multigenerational family when one generation begins to move on or becomes disabled and it's time to pass that on.
24:33
There are three different milestones.
24:34
Each one I think is so important.
24:36
But yeah, I loved his point that, you know, you may not have to put up with them for past 18.
24:42
You know, you have to put up with them, you know, because you didn't train them up.
24:45
I think that's such a, I'm sorry, you guys, like he's getting to the root of the problem here.
24:50
You abdicated the responsibility when your kid was five years old.
24:53
And now you're this strange child who's in your house, you know, who's 15 and is driving you crazy.
25:00
And you're like, just counting down the days till I turn 18 and you can be rid of this.
25:05
Rid of what?
25:06
Rid of what you created.
25:08
Rid of what your abdication created.
25:11
That's what we have to admit.
25:13
Like and so and this doesn't end, by the way, just a newsflash.
25:17
People that didn't abdicate and then watch their kid leave at 18.
25:21
It's not like they they were able to.
25:23
Most people are not psychopaths like they cannot cut those heart ties.
25:27
Right.
25:28
For mothers in particular, like the sort of adage that a mother is can't be happier than her least happy child.
25:34
That doesn't end at 18, by the way.
25:37
Like, you know, that child who's who's struggling at 22 and having all kinds of issues, that mom is still going to suffer greatly because that child is struggling at 22.
25:50
She's just going to feel like, I don't know why I'm suffering.
25:52
I got to get further away from this kid.
25:54
Maybe if maybe if I if I moved to Florida, I could have peace.
25:58
Like, how can I release this feeling of motherliness?
26:02
Like, why did God?
26:03
Maybe that's there for a reason, you know?
26:06
Maybe you were told something, something, a lie about the nature of the connection you have with this child, right?
26:14
Like, that's, ugh.
26:15
Like, I really hate the fact that we're trying to sever those heart connections between us and our children.
26:21
Why are we doing that?
26:23
I think that's one of the biggest, unfortunate, long-term unseen consequences of the feminism,
26:31
feminist movement, all of the things they've done.
26:34
And even if you're a Christian in this world and you're kind of in and out of feminist
26:39
belief because the culture is so strong and so loud, it's this handicap that we've put
26:47
on the definition of motherhood, that even if you decide to be a good present mother
26:54
throughout your kids' raising years, there does come this time where it's almost like
26:57
you're no longer a mother or something.
27:00
Yeah.
27:02
You're their friend.
27:03
And when you become a mother, you are a mother for the rest of your life.
27:07
You care about and love this child for the rest of your life.
27:13
and it is a lie to say that there will come a time when you no longer will hurt when they hurt
27:20
or rejoice when they rejoice and our responsibility and how we handle that does shift and change over
27:27
time and with levels of you know them taking on their own responsibilities and when they get
27:33
married and they have their relationship with their spouse so there is appropriate and inappropriate
27:38
ways to handle the mother relationship.
27:40
I think there are toxic ways and all that stuff for sure.
27:44
But to think that you won't, that you can somehow release yourself from caring, release yourself
27:50
from loving, release yourself from worrying about your kids is such a lie.
27:57
And so we, because we
27:59
believe that lie so strongly, we haven't prepared ourself for it when it comes.
28:03
That's right.
28:04
Yeah.
28:04
People are always shocked by that, it seems like, because of this.
28:07
Yeah.
28:07
I just thought I would feel differently.
28:08
I thought I would just say, oh, that's their thing.
28:10
And it's just we're incapable of doing that for the most part.
28:14
And I would like to say, too, in terms of the friendship thing, you know, I think this is an analogy that really has been overused.
28:24
I think it can be somewhat helpful.
28:25
But yes, your child, like my, I have a much deeper friendship with Jackson, you know, at 25 than I did when he was five.
28:34
Yes.
28:34
So that is a dynamic that I would say is analogous to friendship that has been increasing and will continue to increase as he gets older.
28:44
And we just become, you know, more like peers than we were when he was five.
28:49
Right.
28:49
That's inevitable.
28:50
And that's a beautiful thing to enjoy.
28:52
I will never stop being his father.
28:55
Like, and this was so frustrating.
28:56
It's like there are there.
28:58
He's never going.
28:59
He's going to have lots of friends.
29:00
He's never going to have another father, like a physical father in his life or, you know, a mother.
29:04
But I think that there's a realization of friendship in our culture and a demonization of motherhood and fatherhood.
29:10
And because of that, we're like, well, I'm more comfortable with this identity as friend.
29:16
And like I said, it's a good analogy.
29:19
Like there is a friendship that should develop.
29:22
But there's a, I think the big difference is friends have zero responsibility like for other friends in certain areas of their life.
29:32
Like economics, for example.
29:34
Like you should not put like on your friends the responsibility to help you economically.
29:39
That's a voluntary thing they can choose to do or not.
29:42
I think as a mother or father, you absolutely have a responsibility to your adult children to do what you can.
29:49
There's no definition for what this looks like across every family.
29:52
It's going to look different for every family.
29:54
But do what you can to help your children.
29:56
Like that's, so we're going to look at these three milestones.
29:58
This to me is like, I want to get practical.
30:01
And again, we're trying to get down to first principles and figure out, okay, what?
30:04
What are the milestones that matter if it's not about a magical age?
30:09
So three milestones that actually matter.
30:11
The Bible doesn't mark adulthood by a number.
30:14
It marks it by transitions.
30:16
There are three milestones that every parent should be aiming towards, and none of them is 18.
30:20
The first milestone is marriage.
30:22
The first moment Scripture shows a separation between parent and child is not at some arbitrary age, but at marriage.
30:28
This is when authority transfers.
30:30
This is when a child leaves father and mother and cleaves to a spouse, forming a new covenant union.
30:35
Until that happens, you have responsibility.
30:38
This doesn't mean you're meant to control your children indefinitely.
30:41
The goal of healthy parenting is to help them become increasingly independent from your direct control.
30:46
But independence from control is not the same as freedom from your responsibility.
30:50
This is where people get something very wrong.
30:54
You can gradually expand their freedom while maintaining your ongoing care.
30:57
Now, there is one exception to this marriage milestone, I think.
31:01
Jesus describes it in Matthew 19.
31:03
Some have renounced marriage for the sake of the kingdom of God.
31:06
So throughout church history, this has been recognized as another moment of transition.
31:09
When a young person enters a community of others, when they have formally renounced
31:13
marriage, I do think at that point, you leave, in a very similar sense, the authority of
31:18
father and mother and enter in the authority of a community, a monastic community, religious
31:22
order, things like that.
31:23
You have also devoted yourself wholeheartedly to Christ.
31:25
Paul also makes reference to this in 1 Corinthians 7.
31:28
In that case, responsibility shifts from the
31:30
family to that intentional community, but those are your two options.
31:34
That's it.
31:35
Until your child
31:36
marries or makes a countercultural choice to remain single for Christ, your responsibility
31:42
continues.
31:44
It is ongoing.
31:46
I hope that's good news because you get to invest more and more in your
31:50
child.
31:51
And again, I think in terms of control, you should be giving them more and more and more and
31:57
more independence from your direct control.
32:00
You know, that starts at, you know, when your child
32:03
is turning two or three and it should continue based on their maturity.
32:07
And so we're not
32:08
advocating for like, again, like a five-year-old level of control over a 15-year-old or a 25-year-old.
32:17
We're saying that if you're just looking at scripture, marriage is the moment when authority transfers.
32:24
So I would say you do have ongoing responsibility and ongoing authority in the life of a child.
32:30
And I would be very careful how you wield that as they're getting into there.
32:34
You should let them make most decisions on their own.
32:37
But there does come a moment where, wow, like they they need a surgery.
32:43
We're going to pay for it.
32:44
You know what?
32:45
They're 24.
32:46
They're a grown man.
32:47
It doesn't matter.
32:48
Like you're still responsible.
32:49
Pay for that surgery.
32:50
You know, and in the same way, if they're going down some terribly dark path, then you need to stand up and take authority.
32:57
Now, if they like say, look, the government says I have authority and so you don't have any, they're going to have the power in our culture to make that decision.
33:07
In ancient times, they would not have that power.
33:09
The paterfamilias in the Jewish world, the Roman world, had absolute authority over their adult children that were unmarried.
33:17
And we don't have that.
33:19
We don't have that system any longer.
33:21
But again, what we're dealing with is the tail wagging the dog, like the idea that the government can make a decision or pass a law.
33:28
And then we as Christians just automatically capitulate and say, well, that just is the new reality.
33:33
Like we can say, look, within our community, this is what we recognize.
33:37
Children might not recognize that when they become adults, they might choose to get emancipated fully from their parents and they have the legal power to do that.
33:45
But that should not change the way the other 99 percent of families.
33:50
suddenly start to function.
33:52
That's what I mean by the tail wagging the dog.
33:53
It's like the government
33:55
does not tell the family how it's to be structured.
33:58
Families, in collaboration with their
34:01
religious community, in our case with the Christian community, through our studying of the Bible,
34:07
need to make these decisions.
34:09
And so I'm happy for people to come and push back on everything
34:13
we're saying here, but please use the Bible to push back.
34:16
And part of what I want you to
34:17
understand is the way that most people actually reason, they don't reason from biblical first
34:22
principles.
34:23
They start with an emotional feeling, and then they do everything they can to shove that
34:28
emotional feeling and read it back into the scripture.
34:30
That's called ad hoc reasoning.
34:32
In other words, you start with a conclusion, and you try to find proof texts to justify your
34:37
conclusion.
34:38
I'm so sick of that.
34:39
That is so destructive.
34:40
This is how we got here.
34:41
The Bible
34:42
has such beauty about trying to articulate what God's original design was for family,
34:49
and we need to take it very seriously.
34:51
Now, we are saying as well that there is a total
34:54
authority transfer that occurs in marriage.
34:57
It's totally inappropriate for me as a father
35:00
to wield authority over my daughter who's married, right?
35:04
That is not okay.
35:05
She is under the authority
35:06
of her husband.
35:07
I can influence her or influence her husband, and if there's something that I think
35:11
might be controversial in their marriage, then we've made a decision to always go to the husband
35:15
first and have that conversation privately with him and let him lead his own family because we
35:20
don't have the authority to do that.
35:22
And the last thing we want to do is create a rift in their
35:25
family.
35:25
Like we are 100% pro that branch of the family being healthy and being in good order.
35:31
And
35:31
in order to do that, we have to really respect these lines of authority.
35:35
One of the things that
35:35
does occur, and this is going to get in a minute into our second point, is that the way that
35:40
authority worked in ancient times and the way it could still work today and the way it works in
35:44
many multi-generational families is that when you are married, you have complete authority over your
35:51
branch of the family.
35:52
But then you can voluntarily choose to reenter a economic engine of the family
35:58
still being led by your parents.
36:00
And in that arena, they still have authority.
36:03
And we do that
36:04
with our kids.
36:05
So all of our kids interact with various economic engines that we're a part of.
36:10
And the same thing would happen if, let's say, you're the elder of a church or the pastor of a church and your married children decide to join that church.
36:16
Well, guess what?
36:18
In the arena of that church, you do have authority now over your children, right?
36:23
In conjunction with those other elders or whatever the polity is of your church.
36:27
So there's a bit of complexity to this that's really important to dive into.
36:32
We're very simplistic about this.
36:34
So we're going to get down to the second milestone because I think it's a really important one and one that Myron talked about in his comments.
36:39
But yeah, April, anything else that that stirs up for you in terms of like this marriage milestone, how to think about that?
36:44
Well, I just agree with you.
36:47
I think that that's biblical that when one of your offspring gets married, that they are now a unit with that person and they all the authority transfers.
36:57
So if it's a son, then he becomes an authority over his wife.
37:02
And if it's a daughter, she becomes under the authority of her husband.
37:06
And the men of those branches are welcome to seek advice, to desire to kind of come under a vision that you might have as the grandfather.
37:18
But they are on their own in terms of authority.
37:22
And we believe that.
37:23
But if they are running into a hardship or need help making a decision or if, you know, a lot of times it's like a medical situation, you know, having new babies can bring up all kinds of unexpected expenses, things like that.
37:39
Like we have committed to being there for our kids and trying to help them in ways that we can that will help them try to live out the way they feel like God is calling them to live.
37:51
and we love that.
37:55
We enjoy it.
37:56
It's an honor to get to do that
37:58
and we want them to do that for their children,
38:02
our grandchildren as well.
38:04
Yeah, yes.
38:06
That was a huge milestone.
38:07
We need to really emphasize this far more than we do
38:09
and obviously there are unhealthy, toxic parents
38:12
who will use this in inappropriate ways
38:14
to control their adult children
38:16
and I think that what I would do in that case
38:19
is you need to go escalate this to the church
38:23
and say to leaders of the church,
38:25
I need to be emancipated from my controlling father or mother
38:28
or whatever weird dynamics happening there.
38:31
If they're a part of that Christian community, they should weigh in.
38:33
If they're not a part of that Christian community
38:35
and your community is saying this is totally inappropriate,
38:38
this is stifling, I think that they do have authority at that point
38:41
to help emancipate you in the same way that a judge can emancipate
38:45
somebody who's being an abusive family.
38:48
I think that that's something that you should formally seek to get out from under.
38:52
And I think that those are the exceptions.
38:53
Again, we need to really be careful that the exceptions do not become the rule.
38:56
And that's what constantly happens because we have this obsession with freedom.
38:59
And if we find an exception that where freedom is being offered, we're like, let's all just
39:05
smuggle into that exception so we get more freedom.
39:07
Because in America, that's the only value.
39:09
It's not about love.
39:10
It's not about justice.
39:11
It's not about order.
39:12
It's not about peace.
39:13
It's not about faith.
39:14
It's not about hope.
39:14
It's about freedom.
39:15
You guys have to understand that we've elevated this weird value just completely out of proportion to its actual value in the biblical hierarchy of values.
39:26
And this is causing massive problems with our intuitions in areas like this.
39:30
So, okay, the second milestone, this is a really important one.
39:32
Myron talked about this.
39:33
Economic independence is a really big milestone.
39:36
You have responsibility to help your children become economically independent from you and from everyone else.
39:43
That is something that every family should be constantly working towards.
39:46
This is very normal historically.
39:48
And so let me read you guys what I wrote here.
39:50
The second milestone is when a young couple has the ability to provide for themselves
39:53
and their growing family.
39:55
This might happen quickly or slowly depending on the strength of the family system, but
39:58
the goal should always be clear.
40:00
The older generation exists to set the younger generation on the pathway toward economic
40:04
independence.
40:05
Paul captures this in 1 Thessalonians 4, telling Gentile believers to make it their goal to
40:09
live a quiet life, to work with their hands, to reach a level of financial independence
40:12
so they will not, quote, have to depend on anyone.
40:15
This is a very important biblical goal.
40:17
The Torah talks about this.
40:19
We want to get to a place where we can be maximally generous
40:21
through becoming first economically independent,
40:24
because if you're constantly dependent on handouts from other people,
40:27
you aren't really able to fully lead your own family,
40:30
fully make your own decisions, right?
40:32
And so it's important to get to that place.
40:34
Every family needs to be free of the state,
40:37
free from coercion from other people
40:39
so that they can actually follow the things
40:41
that they follow their conscience, like give generously to others.
40:45
That's a really critical
40:46
goal.
40:46
Now, this is not a moral question.
40:48
It's not immoral to not be economically independent.
40:52
That's not the way the Bible talks about this.
40:53
This is really in the wisdom category.
40:55
But children need help from the previous generation to get there.
40:59
So here's what's
40:59
striking for most human history.
41:01
Cutting your children off at 18 would have been a death
41:03
sentence most of these times in human history.
41:06
In a subsistence economy, everyone needed access
41:08
to family resources to survive.
41:10
Parents understood they would spend their year,
41:12
sometimes a decade or more,
41:14
under the care of their adult children in their old age.
41:17
This wasn't sentiment.
41:18
It was survival.
41:19
Loving your children well meant helping them achieve
41:22
financial independence in an atmosphere of trust
41:24
and cooperation, not domination.
41:27
So one of the things that has been totally disrupted,
41:30
many people don't realize,
41:31
that the worst legacy of Social Security
41:34
is the destruction of the incentive
41:36
that every single parent had
41:38
to set up their children for financial economic independence.
41:42
So the incentive that used to be, everyone would say,
41:45
wow, we don't understand the future.
41:48
We don't understand if we're going to be disabled.
41:51
I, as the provider father, could die, and then my wife could spend the next 10, 20, 30 years as a widow.
41:58
And so what was our Social Security throughout all of history?
42:02
It was raising children to become economically independent.
42:05
And so when your children were reaching adulthood, all the parents around, if they had any wisdom at all, would be doing everything they could to help their children become economically independent.
42:15
So this created enormous incentive to create strong relational bonds between generations because I need you to love me and to care for me and your mother.
42:25
And I need you to know that I'm going to help you not to give you an obligation that you are you are somehow financially in debt to me, but as a matter of honor.
42:36
And this is why in the fourth commandment, it says the fifth commandment says honor your father and mother so that it will go well with you.
42:42
because this was a generational thing.
42:44
If every generation honored their father and mother,
42:47
and we all knew that that meant take care of them in their old age.
42:50
Jesus talks about this.
42:52
This is
42:52
what it meant.
42:54
That meant that you have these strong generational connections, and that meant
43:00
that you had an incentive to set up your child for economic success.
43:04
So we live in an unusually
43:05
stable economic system.
43:07
When you cut your kids off at 18, they probably won't starve.
43:10
But that
43:11
Stability has given parents a false sense of justification for abandoning their economic
43:16
responsibility to their children.
43:18
But biblical responsibility doesn't disappear just because
43:21
you're in a different economic world.
43:24
This would be considered both terribly unethical to cut off
43:28
your kids economically, but more than that, just incredibly foolish and short-sighted because
43:34
you're cutting off the branch that you're standing on.
43:37
But that's no longer true because now the
43:39
government's going to come in and give you social security.
43:41
The government's going to provide for
43:42
you in old age.
43:43
And so now I can just spend all my money on myself.
43:46
I can neglect my children.
43:48
And it's not going to really necessarily have a terrible impact on my, you know, my last 10 or
43:53
20 years of life.
43:55
That's horrible.
43:57
If I could, if I could change that, I would.
43:59
Like, it's okay to
44:00
suffer in your old age if your suffering was created by neglecting your children in terrible
44:07
ways.
44:07
And there should be all kinds of safety nets for people that are worthy of being cared for,
44:14
provided for because of some tragedy that happened to them.
44:18
But we can't have safety nets for people
44:21
that are constantly abusing, neglecting everyone and then say, okay, but we want to create equality.
44:25
So your life has got to look identical to everyone who was being loving and wise.
44:31
Because
44:32
Because that confuses the next generation.
44:34
They can't learn wisdom because we've completely scrambled the story.
44:39
And that creates this very foolish culture that we're now living into because all the messages have been confused.
44:46
So the second milestone is, let's work with our kids until they get to this place of economic
44:51
independence.
44:52
And that can take all the years.
44:54
That's okay.
44:55
This is a privilege.
44:56
Again,
44:56
everything that we're describing here, I would couch under the understanding of it being a
45:02
privilege.
45:02
And you see this in the different parables Jesus told.
45:06
There was always a connection
45:07
economically between the father and the son, right?
45:11
In the story of the prodigal son, you have
45:12
the older brother, who's obviously economically very connected to his father.
45:16
And what was so
45:17
egregious about what the younger son does is that he wants all of the inheritance now,
45:23
and he definitely felt like he had a right to that inheritance.
45:26
And Jesus wasn't suggesting
45:28
that that wasn't true.
45:29
He was simply describing that what this younger son did, and there's,
45:34
of course, endless depths to that parable.
45:37
But what's interesting, what I want to point out
45:39
is how normal that this was in the first century and how weird it is today to assume that as a
45:46
father, I have a vested interest in the economic thriving of my children.
45:54
What are your thoughts
45:54
about the idea that we, do we have an obligation towards economic independence or helping our kids
46:00
achieve that?
46:02
Well, I think this one's very hard to get over in this modern culture,
46:07
because I think we've seen so many abuses of it so publicly.
46:10
I alluded to this earlier just with the wealthy, famous,
46:18
if they pass anything on to their kids,
46:21
it's through trust funds and trust fund babies
46:23
and there's this exorbitant overspending and shopping for clothes
46:27
and not having purpose and all of this stuff.
46:30
So I feel like if you are passing on purpose and meaning
46:35
as part of a financial inheritance, it makes a lot more sense because there is a framework within
46:43
the structure set up.
46:44
Like if the meaning behind a financial gift is, you know, supporting
46:51
while there's a child being born or something like that.
46:55
Like if there's, you know, help with
46:57
a down payment for a house or if they're so that they can afford to live in a safer neighborhood
47:03
or something like that.
47:04
Like there are these things that you can do for your kids that are couched within a meaning
47:10
and within an understanding and a purpose that is different than what we see modeled
47:17
in the world.
47:18
Yeah.
47:19
Yeah.
47:20
Yeah.
47:20
I think it's really important just to like, it seems like the culture has done everything
47:23
they can to denigrate this idea of the economic connections.
47:28
And the reason is, you guys, there is in the same way that we've elevated freedom, we've elevated another value, equality, so much.
47:38
Again, these are good values.
47:39
We're not saying they're bad values.
47:41
They need to be nested inside of a hierarchy of values.
47:43
And if you get that hierarchy wrong, you end up saying, well, for the sake of equality, I'm going to make sure I don't provide anything for my, you know, if everybody's not getting, you know, college paid for, I shouldn't help my kids go to college.
47:55
If everybody's not getting investment from their family for a new business, I'm not going to give my kids any money for investing.
48:03
Like, that's where you basically elevated the value of equality over love.
48:08
Okay, we're almost done.
48:10
Third milestone comes when the leadership of the larger multigenerational family passes the next generation.
48:15
This is death or disability.
48:16
When the patriarch or matriarch passes on or becomes disabled, the next generation inherits and stewards all that is left of the family's resources.
48:23
This is when the clan leadership, the multi-generational leadership shifts from one generation fully to another.
48:29
So this is where the real vision emerges, not isolated nuclear families, but multi-generational teams working together, each generation passing wisdom, resources, and vision to the next.
48:38
This contract has been terribly violated in our time.
48:40
Many forces have eroded the connection between generations and redefining responsibility.
48:45
But we've hit a new low with the idea that an arbitrary age erases a mother or father's calling to be a mother or father.
48:50
So these are the three milestones.
48:52
there's a milestone that occurs at marriage, a milestone that occurs as we're getting closer
48:56
to economic independence, and then a milestone that occurs when death or disability shifts the
49:02
leadership of a multi-generational family from one generation to the next.
49:05
Those are biblical.
49:06
You see examples of all three of those throughout the Bible.
49:09
They make a lot of sense in the context
49:10
of multi-generational family.
49:12
I'm just saying, you guys, this makes a lot more sense to me than
49:15
the arbitrary age of 18 that seems like in the church has become this weird obsession.
49:21
So let me play for you one last little clip.
49:23
This is a podcaster dad who was kind of thinking this through,
49:26
and you can kind of see the light bulbs going on with somebody like this.
49:30
And this is, I think, really helpful to think about as we conclude here.
49:35
I think the kid should be able to live at home as long as the kid wants to
49:38
and as long as they're being productive.
49:39
If the kid needs a place to stay while they're trying to build their dreams
49:42
or start a business or become a more productive, integrated part of society, let them.
49:47
Why?
49:48
Because life is expensive and stressful enough.
49:49
Our generation is bought into the mentality of 18 and you're out.
49:53
Go to college, go work.
49:54
You got to figure this out on your own.
49:56
I don't want to do that.
49:57
I want to make sure that my household is a safe haven for my kids for as long as they
50:00
live.
50:01
You can always come home.
50:02
We will always support you.
50:03
We always be here for you as long as you are still looking to improve and grow.
50:08
Yeah.
50:08
So I really like the kind of caveat that if your kids are working hard, they've got good
50:13
character.
50:14
They're not taking advantage of the family, the resources, stability of the family to
50:18
just coast.
50:20
Um, they're going to need to take multiple cracks that like becoming more and more independent.
50:24
And why wouldn't you want your house to be a safe haven while they're trying to do this?
50:28
Life is hard and it's getting harder for this generation.
50:31
I think one of the things that's going to be really tough on the next generation is
50:35
that the parents had it easier.
50:37
And that's a real strange situation to be in when a generation emerges and their parents
50:42
are like, well, this was, we did this.
50:44
Why can't you do it?
50:45
And they're actually growing up in a more difficult situation.
50:49
You have to be aware of that collision.
50:52
I feel like that's a very, very important thing to note, because I think if you were if you were coming into adulthood in like the late 80s, early 90s, things are very different now than they were then.
51:06
College isn't what it used to be.
51:09
The our economic situation is not what it used to be.
51:13
Technology is not what it used to be.
51:15
There are these massive things, housing markets, all the stuff.
51:19
Um, that are different.
51:20
And so if you're going to pretend like things are the same as they were when you were coming into adulthood, the things that were expected of you, the things that made sense, the steps you were able to take on your own or independently, um, then you're going to set your kid up for failure.
51:36
And so I think we have to acknowledge the current, you have to know the temperature of the culture right now, of the financial, what's going on in the world, and the economic situation that we're in.
51:51
all the things that are changing so quickly with careers, with AI on the horizon, all of these
51:56
things need to be considered when you're thinking about how you're, you know, considering how you're
52:03
thinking about post high school years for your kids.
52:07
You really need to consider these things
52:09
and come, like, make sure you're staying in touch with reality enough to know what you can expect
52:15
and not expect of your kids.
52:18
Yeah.
52:18
Yeah, we see all the time, you know,
52:20
if the goal is to make your ceiling their floor,
52:24
then I think you're achieving something.
52:27
Really, you're fulfilling that generational mandate.
52:30
But if your floor becomes their ceiling,
52:33
you've got a lot of work to do.
52:35
And culturally, we're sort of creating that problem
52:37
for the next generation.
52:37
And I'm very sorry that that's happening.
52:40
There has been some kind of generational betrayal.
52:42
We can talk more about why that happened.
52:45
but that does happen from time to time historically
52:48
and like you said April I think we just need to be very sensitive to
52:51
that situation because it's so destructive
52:54
to launch your kids out into a more difficult
52:57
world and not be aware of
53:00
what they could be suffering from because
53:03
you were saying well I could easily help them but this magical
53:06
age occurred and so we've got to let them go.
53:08
In conclusion
53:09
if we could erase the idea of 18 as a magical milestone it would transform
53:12
families.
53:12
It's not real.
53:13
It's a political and governmental designation that should never
53:16
have the final say over your family, over your church.
53:19
What we need instead is a complete
53:21
rethinking responsibility between generations.
53:23
We need to return to scripture as our guide,
53:25
not to culture, not to political movements from decades past, but to what God actually calls us
53:30
as parents.
53:31
The question isn't, when can I stop being responsible?
53:33
The question is, how do I help
53:34
my children flourish across their entire lives?
53:38
And how do I build a multi-generational family
53:39
that reflects God's design and passes his vision forward,
53:43
that's a calling worth fighting for,
53:45
and it has nothing to do with the age of 18.
53:47
So thanks so much, April, for jumping on here with me today.