[00:00:06] Speaker A: Hi. My name is Katie Malone.
[00:00:07] Speaker B: And I'm Brendan, the husband.
[00:00:09] Speaker A: And you're listening to The Little Flock, the podcast that offers practical insights about living a counterculture of goodness, truth, and beauty in a world of increasingly hostile secularism and indifference.
[00:00:19] Speaker B: So if you're looking to learn from two imperfect followers of Christ about how to live like the wheat amongst the darnell, this is definitely the podcast for you.
Hi, everybody. Welcome along to this month's episode of The Little Flock podcast.
[00:00:36] Speaker A: It's great to be back.
[00:00:37] Speaker B: Yeah, it is good, isn't it? Katie, it's been a month doing well. We are so far consistent. We've strung two together in a row. Just a couple of quick little admin things to get out of the way before we jump into today's topics of conversation and the questions that you've sent us, we've got some great stuff to talk about today. First of all, please, whatever platform that you are listening on, if it allows you to give this show a rating, please give it a rating. If you're able to give it some stars and a positive comment or two, all of that really helps the show, please subscribe on whatever platform you're listening on. That way you'll be kept up to date every time we publish a new episode of this podcast. If you want to support the work that we are doing, you can do that in two ways. One is you can go to Lifenet.org NZ and you will see a donate button, and it's got details there about how you can make a donation. You can either become a one off donor, or you can become an AP supporter of the LifeNet Charitable Trust and support our important ministry work. That way, if you're in New Zealand and you do that, you will get a tax receipt, which means that you can claim back your tax at the end of the year. The other way to do it, if you're interested, is go to Patreon.com, become a five dollar monthly
[email protected] left Foot Media. The link is in today's show notes and you will get access to a whole heap of patron only content. So our patrons get exclusive content every single week. So if you're into stuff like commentary on cultural issues, current affairs, our monthly Conservative Conversations podcast, you get the full length episode of that if you're a patron, et cetera. So there's lots there if you're interested in that. That's another way of supporting our work. Last but not leastly is leastly a word?
[00:02:19] Speaker A: Don't think so.
[00:02:20] Speaker B: No, definitely not. I'll be in Trouble team later on. Katie is a lover of the appropriateness of the English language. Yes, because you studied what not the English language. No, it was other languages. Translation, italian linguistics, wasn't it? You see, I know, I remember. Good husband.
[00:02:38] Speaker A: I didn't study linguistics, but yeah.
[00:02:40] Speaker B: Oh, I keep saying that, but that's not I've been telling telling people, people porky. My wife is a PhD in international intelligence. No, she studied Italian and other stuff like that.
[00:02:52] Speaker A: Stuff like that.
[00:02:54] Speaker B: Terrible.
[00:02:55] Speaker A: You know nothing about nothing.
[00:02:57] Speaker B: What's that proverb?
[00:02:58] Speaker A: First rule of life.
[00:02:59] Speaker B: First rule of life is if you're.
[00:03:00] Speaker A: In a hole no, you know nothing about nothing.
[00:03:02] Speaker B: Well and if you're in a hole, don't keep digging.
I'll put my spade away right now. Okay, so, one other thing. If you want to send us your questions and topics you'd like us to talk about, please do that. The best way to do it is to go to Lifenet.org NZ. And at the top of the page there, you will see a link for how you can actually fill in a form on the LifeNet website. You can also find that
[email protected]. So we've got a new URL. Things have been sort of up in the world. Yeah, we are. Things are moving and shaking. I should have said that. Actually, we've got a brand new URL just for this show, so the littleflockpodcast no spaces all lowercase.org. And if you go to that URL, that takes you to our podcast page, and all the episodes are there. You can share it with your friends. And so there's also a link there at the top of that page for submitting your questions, and it takes you to the LifeNet website. And it's a form on there. You don't need to give us your name if you don't want to. That's totally optional. I know a lot of people do, but you don't have to. So it's totally anonymous. We don't read out names on here generally anyway, so, yeah, send us your questions. Send us your topics, and we will have a look at those. We actually had one come in just a couple of days ago, which we're going to look at in this episode. So that's how to get in contact with us and send us the questions that you want us to answer. Right. With that all out of the way, the burden of admin the Brendan Spiel. Yeah. Notices. Okay. Everyone sit down for notice time. I used to hate that.
Does that irritate you? No. Notices don't bother you? No, man. It must be a dad thing. Come on. I ain't here for notices.
Let's get the show on the road. We had speaking of shows on the road over the weekend, and last week, we were pretty fortunate in our little church community. And there's a school attached to it as well. We had this awesome guy called Andy Mullins, come from.
[00:05:03] Speaker A: Australian come and talk to us.
[00:05:04] Speaker B: Yeah. And about parenting and parenting with faith and parenting with virtue and yeah. What do you think? It was pretty awesome.
[00:05:10] Speaker A: It was pretty good. Yep. I was pleased that I twisted your arms and elbows and knees and legs and all the other things I had to twist to drag you out of the house on a weekend.
[00:05:19] Speaker B: Yeah, well and to be fair, I did come a little bit late, but.
[00:05:22] Speaker A: Hey, just to just explain what's going.
[00:05:26] Speaker B: On here, I had a lawn to mow, and what else did I have to do? Lawn to mow. And I had music to prepare for church. But I did arrive and a little bit late, but we came in separate cars.
[00:05:38] Speaker A: Getting Brennan to do anything on a Saturday apart from projects is a pretty big deal.
[00:05:42] Speaker B: Yeah, I gave hours of my project time to the project, but it was worth it. It was a it was awesome. He is awesome.
[00:05:50] Speaker A: Yep. It was great. Well worth.
[00:05:53] Speaker B: And you went along to the Thursday night I had something else on Thursday night, so I couldn't do that. But you went along to the Thursday night where he talked about parenting with virtue.
[00:05:59] Speaker A: Parenting for character.
[00:06:00] Speaker B: A parenting for character. And you talked about virtue.
[00:06:02] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:06:04] Speaker B: He's got a PhD. Is it in neuroscience? Yes.
That's quite fascinating. Had that tie in.
[00:06:11] Speaker A: Yes, it was great. Yeah. Lots of little funny stories, which I always appreciate.
[00:06:16] Speaker B: Stories I love me a funny story.
[00:06:17] Speaker A: Love me a funny story about other people's children. Not my children, but other people's children.
Yeah, really good. Really solid. Just good moral stuff. Even if you weren't coming at it from a religious point of view, I think valuable for everybody.
[00:06:31] Speaker B: Yeah. How would you say because Thursday night there was a bit more neurosciencey sort of stuff? How would you say that factored in. Could you think of anything particular when you think about neuroscience tied into talking about character and virtue, was it just sort of just general behavioral tips around that?
[00:06:48] Speaker A: Oh, gosh, I have to cast my mind back. It's been a long weekend. An actual long weekend.
[00:06:53] Speaker B: Happy birthday, King Charles II.
[00:06:56] Speaker A: The kids keep calling it queen's birthday. We can't get ahead around the queen, not the king.
[00:07:02] Speaker B: We baked him a cake, and we ate it for him.
[00:07:04] Speaker A: No, we baked the twins a cake.
[00:07:05] Speaker B: Okay. Our children's birthday. But here you go, king. This is the remains of the day. Oh, you can't have it. I will eat it. Then.
[00:07:10] Speaker A: He talked a lot about the importance of modeling and those early formative years, which I found really interesting.
Just how important is to get your family culture kind of under control ASAP? Yeah, that's right. It's never too late, right?
[00:07:28] Speaker B: No. Well, it's funny because I've noticed that I don't know about you, but I feel this a bit lately, and you get the comments from our eldest because they notice that we've become better at parenting now with the younger children. They're like, hey, how come we didn't get that? Or they get away with this. Or it's quite funny. It's like, I'm sorry you poor suckers had to endure that. You were the training dummies for our train wreck of let's do parenting by feel.
But that's true, though, establishing a pattern and being consistent with it.
Yeah, it's funny. We had a little incident over the weekend where I've instructed our eldest and our second eldest and third eldest that they are absolutely to iron their school uniform shirt every week because they decided about two weeks ago, oh, no, I don't need to iron my shirt. I'll just wear a jacket over the top. And we're like, no. And there was this interesting little back and forth, a little Tetrate about.
[00:08:27] Speaker A: Brendan's quite passionate about ironing. He's actually in charge of the ironing in the family. Well, yeah, and it's not one of his main talents.
[00:08:35] Speaker B: I'm not an Ironing Nazi. The irons of the clothes must be done. Come into here kinder no, it's because I explained to our children it's an important discipline to learn. It's a skill, and it's about pride in your appearance and having a sort of respect for uniform and all that sort of stuff. It's embroidered in it.
And it was one of those moments where I just had to say, well, that eldest. I was like, look, just trust me, you might not understand this now, but later in life you will actually come to appreciate that. Dad said this is the and when.
[00:09:09] Speaker A: You buy all your own clothes, you can feel free to choose one dining, but in the meantime you have to.
[00:09:15] Speaker B: Wear yeah, it's interesting, that pattern of I was aware of it. We almost had a slippage there where two weeks ago our eldritch just comes out and announces, oh, I don't iron shirts.
And it was almost I think any longer we would have been in trouble. But it was like we had to get that sort of and be consistent. It was a great little moment. But the reason we thought we'd start by talking about Andy Mullins is because we're actually going to have Andy on a future episode. He's going to exciting. I know. Do I not tell you that? Oh, there you go. We communicate well, team. We are experts all the time in communication.
My wife tells me what's going on and I say, yes dear, and then I forget it. And then she reminds me a third time and I've got it that time. No, but Andy is going to be on the show. He's going to zoom in from Melbourne and we're going to talk about some of the stuff. So maybe if you're thinking about questions you'd like to ask him around character. So parenting for character, parenting for faith, anything neuroscience related, send it to us and say, this is for your Andy show, or something like that.
[00:10:16] Speaker A: The andy show.
[00:10:17] Speaker B: The andy show. And we'll actually ask your questions to Andy on the show and then, yeah, we'll have a future episode with him.
[00:10:24] Speaker A: That'd be great.
[00:10:25] Speaker B: Yeah. No, no thinking that week. Right, let's jump into some topics of conversation in the first know we're on the good news bandwagon. You'll be pleased to know this, Katie, because Katie, I think I mentioned this last episode, Katie was like, look, come on, we need to have some good choosing. All these depressing, angry parent throws tomato at neighbor's know. Let's talk about how bad that is. Let's see some positives as well. And so you'll be pleased to know that I have taken that attitude of gratitude.
I know you love those kind of cheesy.
You missed the bearing of the teeth that I got there in the background, folks. But that attitude of gratitude into my other podcast episodes as well.
[00:11:06] Speaker A: Good.
[00:11:07] Speaker B: So I'm trying to do one good news and we had a great one.
[00:11:09] Speaker A: Influencer.
[00:11:10] Speaker B: You are.
[00:11:11] Speaker A: You're my main influence.
[00:11:13] Speaker B: You have control. I feel manipulated. No, but last week we had this great story on one of the episodes, the patrons only episodes about this awesome guy in Christchurch who's been doing this for 20 years. Well, over 20 years.
He just started praying about this 20 years ago. And he started like a firewood ministry for people in need.
[00:11:30] Speaker A: Oh, cool. Yeah, I saw that.
[00:11:31] Speaker B: People just drop off the wood. He's got a team of all volunteers. They don't take money. They do it all in secret. He's been doing it for 20 years. And they pray as they're doing it. They cut the wood up, they take it and trailer loads to people who need it and they say a little prayer with them. And so beautiful, man.
It's rubbed off for me, your positivity.
[00:11:51] Speaker A: I'm glad to go hunting for it. Let's be fair.
[00:11:53] Speaker B: For positivity today, you mean?
[00:11:55] Speaker A: Yeah, well, in the news, what's not out there in the wide world.
[00:12:00] Speaker B: If it bleeds, it leads, as they say in the newsrooms. Right. If it's gory and horrible. Yeah, that is it's true. It's an old saying though, man. The more blood and guts, the higher up the food chain it is. So people click on it. But here's one which was I don't know. I sort of want to categorize this as good news. It's sort of fun news. Fun news.
[00:12:18] Speaker A: Fun news.
[00:12:19] Speaker B: Yeah. It's a puff piece.
It reminded me of Black Adder and Black Adder news or Monty Python esque news. And it's about the first recorded stand up comedy sketch, like a transcript that's been found, like someone recorded going to an event and seeing this comedy and it's been found in a 15th century manuscript.
[00:12:42] Speaker A: Brilliant.
[00:12:42] Speaker B: Now these people are claiming it's the oldest one that we know of. Who knows?
Because I remember, I suppose it's not a stand up comedy sketch, but I remember reading recently about a discovery, and I believe it's an older manuscript, actually, where someone had drawn some doodles in the margin and they'd only shown up when they were photographing the yeah, it wasn't like they did in secret. I guess they were pressing on something else. But these funny little illustrations of something.
[00:13:08] Speaker A: They'Re probably in some kind of, like, medieval boardroom meeting.
[00:13:12] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:13:14] Speaker A: Come on.
[00:13:15] Speaker B: Oh, gosh. York doth go on about the annual reports doing their doodles and the thing, but let's have a read from this article. In the year 1480, a household clearance so we're talking 500. 500. Over 500 years ago. 50 cent. 500.
[00:13:36] Speaker A: From the article.
[00:13:38] Speaker B: I'll just read from the article, shall I? Okay. In the year 1480, our Lord 480, a household cleric and tutor to a noble family named Richard Higgy. Is that how you'd say that or he'd say that? We see you're the linguistic so Richard HEGEE haji Heegie sorry, Richard, however I'm mispronouncing your name. Went to a feast where there was a Minstrel performing a three part act. Heagy recorded as much as he could remember, opening with by me I love this bit, richard HEGEE, because I was at the feast and did not have.
[00:14:13] Speaker A: A drink that's a big claim in 1480, because there wasn't really palatable water.
[00:14:18] Speaker B: I know.
[00:14:19] Speaker A: What they had was wine.
[00:14:21] Speaker B: That is so funny, though.
[00:14:22] Speaker A: You must have been quite thirsty.
[00:14:23] Speaker B: Trust me.
[00:14:24] Speaker A: Determined to remember the standard.
[00:14:26] Speaker B: I doth not drink from the wine cask.
[00:14:29] Speaker A: So I'm a reliable funny because I was sober.
[00:14:32] Speaker B: And it kind of tells a lot about, I guess, how reliable witnesses might have been back in the day. Did you drink? Yes. Okay. You can't be a witness in our court case, but it is quite a funny thing to start with that is illustrative of where the story goes from there. A performance relevant to the humor enjoyed in Britain today and one which colors the High Middle Ages as a time of artistic liberty. Social I was going to say morbidity mobility.
And there was a lot of morbidity, wasn't there? And vigorous nightlife. Hege's booklet contains three texts gleaned from the jester's material. And the three parts were a Hunting of the Hair story featuring a killer rabbit, a horror story, a mock sermon in prose in which three kings eat so much that 24 bulls explode out of their stomach and begin sword fighting.
Some dark humor going on. Let's distract ourselves from the plague with a bit of humor and an alliteration nonsense verse entitled The Battle of Brackenwet. So it does sound very like they say in the article. It's very much like Monty Python.
[00:15:40] Speaker A: I was picturing a medieval Ricky Gervais. Yeah, kind of like.
[00:15:47] Speaker B: That would be funny. But he wouldn't be an atheist because you'd be a believer of some kind. That's true. I could see that. This is the interesting comment for me, though. This is from an expert. People back then partied a lot more than we do today. So Minstrels had plenty of opportunities to perform. They were really important figures in people's lives right across the social hierarchy. Now, that's true, because a court jester, a Minstrel, for example, would go into the king's court and they would do political satire. And so if someone in the king's court was a bit of a noob or a numpty, they'd often ridicule them, or sometimes they'd even ridicule the king and put themselves at Jeopardy.
Yeah. So there's something interesting about that. But that comment, though, got me thinking about how they do festival really well back then. They have community and they gather together and they're not on device.
[00:16:33] Speaker A: Well, they didn't have television and most of them couldn't read.
[00:16:37] Speaker B: Yeah. What are you going to do? Minstrels it is party folk songs.
[00:16:40] Speaker A: Go see the Minstrel.
[00:16:42] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:16:42] Speaker A: And drink if you want to remember it.
[00:16:44] Speaker B: And there would have been a lot of high feasting around the Christian faith. They had lot of everything that they could. So you have periods like Lent and Advent where they would strip back to a bare minimum to prepare. But then Christmas was like a massive feast. Easter was like 50 days of feasting.
The ascension of our Lord, all that. They had pentecost. There was a lot of feasting actually going on, and I think their balance was so much better. I remember reading an article recently about your average peasant. We tend to think of peasant life as this awful onerous, sort of slavery, and I'm not saying it would be glamorous, let's get that straight, but they actually did not work.
The average peasant worked. I think it was something like 150 days a year in total.
And someone who owned their own sort of well, what we think of as.
[00:17:30] Speaker A: Work, because their day to day life.
[00:17:33] Speaker B: Was they followed the seasons, too, as well, with their work. They're quite seasonal, but someone who owned their own, I guess, industry or small business, you might say, they did about, I think it's somewhere around 200 and 3240 days a year, even. That's not huge. So it's interesting how we think of this as we're very sort of liberated, but in actual fact, we're often a lot more enslaved to sort of corporate whims and the amount of work and the way it dominates our life. And we don't have as much feasting and as much community. There's something now we don't have the plague running rampant and we got antibiotics and all that kind of cool stuff, but there's something in that, I think, that's worthy of emulating.
[00:18:07] Speaker A: Right, yeah. Well, their life was probably smaller.
[00:18:10] Speaker B: Yeah. Localized.
[00:18:11] Speaker A: Yeah, localized.
[00:18:12] Speaker B: I mean, I'm not saying it was perfect.
[00:18:16] Speaker A: That's a good thing. I think that's a good thing.
[00:18:17] Speaker B: Yeah. And people are like, let's go back to the 1950s, let's go back to the 15 hundreds. No, I'm not saying that. But yeah, this is the other thing that really was quite funny. It also shows that what we sometimes think of as a society, this is the Middle Ages of science denying religious tyranny created not only these talented comics, but people who enjoyed their work enough to copy it down. Now, the reason why is because we're wrong. This is one of the great myths that came out of the Enlightenment. It's one of the black myths that spread after the Enlightenment was that we lived in this period of darkness and evil and tyranny until these Enlightenment thinkers came along and said, oh, let's all be liberal and satisfying desires, and then they enlightened the world for us and gave us all this stuff. But in actual fact, they weren't science denying, they weren't living in religious tyranny at all. It was really a high point of civilization when you look at the lifestyle and the way it was lived. They might not have had the technology that we had, but yeah, it's interesting to see. And this sort of really just disproves that. Yes.
[00:19:12] Speaker A: And the fact that they had obviously quite clever humor and an interest in that is quite a pointer to their intelligence.
[00:19:20] Speaker B: Yeah.
The joy of life.
And there's sort of clearly a sense of that. The humor is, like you said, it's intelligent, but it's also, like, earnest and sincere. And there's a sort of I mean, I don't I'm under no pretenses. I'm sure there were absolutely larrakin Lauts who were a bit boardy, shall we say, in some of the humor. But generally there's a sort of a beautiful sort of innocence to it. It's not cynical or, I don't know, modern stuff is the cynicism is a big thing in humor now.
[00:20:01] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:20:01] Speaker B: Now, we both enjoy The Office, but The Office probably bought a lot of that.
[00:20:06] Speaker A: Yeah, but there was equally slapstick.
[00:20:09] Speaker B: Yeah, but you know what? But it was sort of more like that everything sucks. Let's find the humor in the fact.
[00:20:16] Speaker A: That stapler and jelly, if you watch.
[00:20:21] Speaker B: The Office anyway, that was the first can I call that a good news story?
[00:20:26] Speaker A: Yeah, go on.
[00:20:28] Speaker B: Go on, then.
[00:20:29] Speaker A: Have a good funny news.
[00:20:30] Speaker B: Have a good chuckle. That was funny news. The second article that I thought we'd actually start with, that was worth having a chat about, I think, was this one from Greg Smalley. And it is. Does your wife feel loved?
I read the headline and I thought, I feel like I'm being targeted by this article.
[00:20:50] Speaker A: The Holy Spirit has chosen to speak to me.
[00:20:53] Speaker B: These people are spying on me. No, but it's a great it's a short article, so let's just read it because it's really great.
It starts like this for the worst oopsie.
For the first wedding ceremony, I officiated. I developed an analogy using the bride's bouquet as a picture of a thriving marriage. I explained how those beautiful flowers required water, sunshine and proper pruning to grow. And I related each of those basic horticultural needs to a particular relationship skill, communication, spiritual relationship, and conflict management. That's quite a cool little how is your bouquet, Katie? That's a very lovely little analogy. Unfortunately, the only thing I could think of for my last relationship point was fertilizer, where this is going, much like fertilizer helps flowers grow, if you want a strong marriage, you need to spend time each day fertilizing each other.
That's what he said. Without realizing what he was saying, the guests started laughing. As I tried to recover, the groom whispered, if you had finished your point, I could get on with fertilizing my bride.
Yes, I know. Bit of body human. At the old Christian marriage there didn't quite realize when I was thinking because my dad, my grandfather, my great grandfather, my great great grandfather, all farmers. And so I thought of, like, cow poo. When I thought of Fertilizing, I was like, what? Why would they be throwing fertilizer at each other? And then I realized oh, I see. Now, despite my Botched analogy, there was an important truth about marriage that I was trying to convey. I hope the young couple could see past my words to understand this key principle, for a marriage to thrive, each spouse must invest time and effort nourishing the relationship. That's so true. Really? And you got to both take responsibility.
[00:22:50] Speaker A: Yes, that's right.
[00:22:51] Speaker B: How often does that sort of fall?
I don't what do you think? I think there's a pattern. Maybe it feels to me like where one of you is struggling or busy and the other one has to pick up the slack and then remind the other one, look, hey, we've got to both invest in this.
[00:23:05] Speaker A: Yes. Right.
[00:23:06] Speaker B: It's a constant struggle, though.
[00:23:07] Speaker A: Yeah. And the worst times are when you're both just crazy busy.
[00:23:11] Speaker B: But it's the struggle worth having.
[00:23:13] Speaker A: Yeah, I agree.
[00:23:14] Speaker B: You know what the hardest part for me is? Actually having that conversation. And you sort of feel a bit, man, do I want to be that spouse or am I reading the room right? Am I really the one?
[00:23:27] Speaker A: Do you mean you feel like you might be wandering away bit?
[00:23:29] Speaker B: Yeah.
I don't know. I don't know how others find it, but I sort of feel because we're not parents to each other, we're in a relationship of total self giving love and we come as equals, giving 100% each and total self giving. And so it does feel a bit awkward to be that one spouse who notices maybe that something has slipped and then feels the burden of having to raise that. It's like, now, I don't want to be a bit of a stick in the mud, but I've noticed that and they're not doing that too often either.
I find it a bit hard, but.
[00:24:04] Speaker A: I feel like maybe instead of having that conversation, that's where you say, well, I actually need to take the initiative and book a table for dinner and actually romance your spouse.
[00:24:14] Speaker B: Yeah. That is a subtle hint. Pro. Wow. Oh, my gosh.
That was a total leaning in of the body.
[00:24:22] Speaker A: Don't do subtle hints.
[00:24:24] Speaker B: Now, I don't want to be that special.
[00:24:25] Speaker A: I've learned anything it's that you don't communication means not being subtle. Just go and say, Oi, enough already. I feel for dinner.
[00:24:36] Speaker B: This is our podcast. Buy me some takeaways yeah.
[00:24:40] Speaker A: Watch a movie.
[00:24:41] Speaker B: I do feel targeted. Shall we go to a minstrel show together? A three part minstrel show? But, yeah, we were going to go.
[00:24:48] Speaker A: To a minstrel, a modern day minstrel show. Remember I asked you to get tickets to a certain British comedian for Christmas?
[00:24:55] Speaker B: It was a million bucks in our.
[00:24:56] Speaker A: First this minstrel is not worth that much money.
[00:24:59] Speaker B: I actually saw one the other day that came up in my feed and I thought, It's an American comedian. And I was like, oh, no, it's Nate Begates. He's so funny.
[00:25:08] Speaker A: But is he funny to me?
[00:25:09] Speaker B: Because sometimes, yeah, you've laughed at some of his stuff.
[00:25:12] Speaker A: It is not reliable evidence that I will enjoy a whole show.
[00:25:15] Speaker B: Trust me. He's a Bruce Mason center.
[00:25:17] Speaker A: But to make me laugh but you.
[00:25:18] Speaker B: Look at it in, like, plane tickets. Million dollars to get into the room.
[00:25:21] Speaker A: Auckland. That would have been extra special.
[00:25:26] Speaker B: I can't do it now, I've revealed myself.
[00:25:28] Speaker A: You've undone the whole thing.
[00:25:31] Speaker B: But I do feel the awkwardness often of do you feel that or not? I don't care. Do you lean into it. This guy needs a you took your cue from my dad, didn't you? What did he say? Don't put up with any rubbish, Katie.
[00:25:45] Speaker A: He said, don't put up with any rubbish. But that was one time when you were outside smoking a cigar and he said, you can let him get away with that. And I said, you've got to pick your battles, Tom.
[00:25:52] Speaker B: This is my dad. Tom.
[00:25:53] Speaker A: Got to pick your battles.
[00:25:53] Speaker B: My dad is wise words.
Where's the family loyalty? And he's like, that makes sure dad.
[00:26:00] Speaker A: Was always great about calling a spade a spade, wasn't he?
[00:26:02] Speaker B: Yeah. And so Katie took a lead from that. Anyway, let's carry on with this article. But I do feel the awkwardness of it. I think that's a challenge of how do you communicate that without and also, you can't be taking notes, you cannot be that spouse. Well, I've got a notebook and I've.
[00:26:15] Speaker A: Actually got five black marks against you, because yeah, awesome article a long time ago that a friend sent to me. It was probably like, ten or 15 years ago, and it was I don't remember a lot of it, but the one thing I do remember is, be grateful for the things your spouse does. Don't be nitpicking on the things they don't do.
[00:26:31] Speaker B: Yeah, good point.
[00:26:31] Speaker A: And she had made the point. I need to be grateful when Joe puts his dishes on the bench and doesn't leave them on the table. Instead of being angry that he didn't put them in the dishwasher, he's actually bothered to clear them that far. And actually he's learning, choosing to see yeah. The good they do, not the bad.
[00:26:48] Speaker B: Well, there is a momentum of progress towards virtue, too. Like, we're all working on that and we notice it. I notice it in you. I'm sure I. Hope you notice it in me. It's like oh, yeah. Every second time, he does actually load the dishwasher. Correct.
[00:26:59] Speaker A: Put the dishwasher on last night. I know he noticed it was fully put it on.
[00:27:03] Speaker B: Yeah. And been open to I was a.
[00:27:05] Speaker A: Little bit like, I could have got those two other bowls in, but it's all right.
[00:27:08] Speaker B: Yeah. I was like, I know if it was me, I know there's going to be a critique of the tetrising that goes on here.
[00:27:15] Speaker A: No, it was awesome.
[00:27:15] Speaker B: But, yeah, there's a movement towards virtue that happens. And I know for you, one of your struggles is sticking around and having a conversation. You'd rather go away, think about it and come back. I'm a Malone. We like to have the big stash and then move on. And we're best mates afterwards. And we had two different ways of dealing with conflict, but you have made that movement and you deliberately like when we're first married, you wouldn't want to engage. You'd want to think and then come back and engage. And I'd be stuck there going, well, I want to engage now. And so we sort of meet each other halfway and there's that sort of movement of virtue on both sides. That sort of yeah, that's what marriages are all about, right? Anyway, let me carry on. Ephesians 528 to 29 reminds us that a husband should care for his wife with the same intensity he nourishes his own body. To nourish is a behavior. So husbands must spend time every day doing things that help a wife feel loved. Like the apostle John explains, let us not love with words or tongue, but with actions. That's from one John 318. Instead of telling your wife that you love her, your job is to learn how to love her with your actions. To do this successfully, you must take on a servant's mindset. Nourishing means seeking to put her needs before your own. This is the call to self giving love and it's so fundamental. And what I love here is that it's kind of crazy, but in the modern thinking. I was watching something last night, actually, and it was meant to be a bit comedic, but the question was asked, well, how do you really love someone? And someone said, yeah, that is a good question, but how do you really love someone? And I was like, no, that's not a good question. Oh, that's a really terrible question. And a culture that's confused because you can actually tell if someone loves you. And their actions will be seeking your good, their speech will be seeking your good. And if it's not, it doesn't matter if they say I love you, they don't love you if their actions and speech don't seek your good.
When often when I'm speaking in high schools, I talk to young women and they're like, how do I know he really loves me? Look at his actions. Shea was wrong. It's not in his kiss. It's in his actions and how he treats you.
He might have the sweetest woman honey tongue words about, I really love you and you mean so much to me. In my world, it's just everything's. You're my rock. But if he doesn't treat you with respect and virtue, then that's not true.
[00:29:28] Speaker A: So actions don't trust a charmer.
[00:29:30] Speaker B: Yeah, well, that's right. A charmer without action. It'll only get you so far, too. Lads, if you're listening, you got to back it up sooner or later. Next, figure out which specific actions help your wife feel loved. And this is the good bit. This is why I thought we'd focus on this article, because this is important. You often hear this, oh, you love your wife, do stuff for her. But this article yeah, but that hones in on it.
[00:29:49] Speaker A: You've got to be really careful there. Like, you're lucky because my love language is Acts of Service.
[00:29:55] Speaker B: I'm lucky. You're lucky that I tell you.
[00:29:57] Speaker A: It's not hard to figure out. Right.
[00:29:59] Speaker B: Well, it was at first, though. It was, yeah, because we got given the Love Languages book and I was like you were like, I'm not reading that.
[00:30:08] Speaker A: Nerdery doing a quiz.
[00:30:11] Speaker B: We got given it for our wedding, and it was a wedding present, and it was one of the best wedding presents we ever got, it turns out. But I resisted it for us. Oh, no. New agey nudie love book. And it was thinking about spot on. It was so practical. There's only four love Languages and the key to them is learning what your one is and what your spouse is. And then you recognize, ah, we give and receive love often in different ways. And so here I am trying to show you I love you, and you're like, that's not my love language.
[00:30:38] Speaker A: You're like, let's play a ball game together.
I'll just be over there. Bummer. Anybody who knows me knows the board games.
[00:30:48] Speaker B: Sure.
[00:30:48] Speaker A: Which would be the Love Language of quality time.
[00:30:51] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:30:52] Speaker A: Which I am like, do we have to yeah.
[00:30:56] Speaker B: And also, the other thing I discovered is you often have a love language for receptivity. So how you receive love and another one for giving, then they can be different.
[00:31:04] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:31:04] Speaker B: So your giving language is gift giving is one of them, I think. Is it true? It's true, isn't it?
[00:31:10] Speaker A: My giving is acts of service.
[00:31:11] Speaker B: No, your gift giving is pretty phenomenal because you know how to give a gift that actually I try. Yeah. I mean, you do both, actually. That's to be fair. That is true. And they can change, I guess, as well.
[00:31:23] Speaker A: They definitely can change. It's important to we probably should redo the quiz.
[00:31:27] Speaker B: Yeah.
But that book actually turned out to be really practical and very wise and really helpful. If you haven't read it, you should read you can read them online.
[00:31:35] Speaker A: It might be five, is it?
[00:31:37] Speaker B: No. Acts of service, quality time, gift giving, words, affirmation. Words of affirmation. I in touch. So you write me five. Yeah. So someone gives you a hug and other people are like, don't give me a hug. I want you to empty the dishwasher to show me that you love me. Yeah. And then that's interesting. And figuring out how each other is different in that way, it's really, really helpful. So this is the bit about this article that's quite good. Next, figure out which specific actions help your wife feel loved. Don't make an educated guess or treat her the way you would like her to treat you. Don't apply the golden rule here, and that this is important. What he's talking about here is what's called the Platinum Rule. So the golden rule is do unto others as you'd have and do unto you. The Platinum Rule is do unto others as they would have done unto themselves. If you've never heard that before, you've learned something today. Your guess may be different from what your wife actually needs or wants. The best way to do this is to have your wife complete this statement. And this is a key one, folks, and probably for husbands as well, to be fair, this is framed around men, but it's for both parties. I feel loved when and then you complete the sentence. So if I said to you, I feel loved when, what would you say?
[00:32:42] Speaker A: I'm back when you put the fire on. Bring the firewood in.
[00:32:48] Speaker B: Pyramania.
[00:32:49] Speaker A: See the things that need to be done and do that.
[00:32:51] Speaker B: Arson is a love language number six.
[00:32:54] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:32:55] Speaker B: Well, you're going to love what's coming up in a few months when you.
[00:32:57] Speaker A: See a job that you know, like, okay, well, if I don't do that job, then Katie's going to be the person that does it, which you get angry when you don't do it, but it's nice to have it done.
[00:33:08] Speaker B: Oh, no, here's another thing. Men and women, if you're listening, there's a really interesting little cue, a little spoiler alert that will come into your house when you have kids, watch what your wife or your husband what irks them about the kids behavior.
[00:33:26] Speaker A: That's a good one.
[00:33:26] Speaker B: It really know because you came out yesterday, Pearl. Katie came out, had a nap, and the kids had just, I don't know.
[00:33:34] Speaker A: Cleaned the kitchen before I went upstairs.
[00:33:35] Speaker B: And then she comes back and take every bowl, every cup, every spoon out of the drawer, and then we'll leave them on the bench. And there's no benches wiped.
[00:33:43] Speaker A: There were some in the lounge, too.
[00:33:45] Speaker B: They're all over the show. And poor old Caddy comes out, and what is the first thing she sees this failure to do? Just basic, simple acts of service. Put it in the dishwasher, give it a wash, stuff like that. And so for her, that's tough, a tough moment. And so as a husband, I get to see I can seagull in on the back of my kids and be a really good husband here. Yeah, okay. Yeah. Next time I will do that active service. And I know that's what she's looking for.
[00:34:09] Speaker A: It's also because I came downstairs and they all were immediately like, Mum is here, we need food.
[00:34:12] Speaker B: Yeah. Need food right now. And they don't trust me. No, maybe I'm too hard on. They just know Dad's not giving us snacks. We'll go to the mum creature. She will give us our food.
So, yeah, I feel loved when and then ask your spouse that and get them to complete it. During each season of marriage, your wife will need something different and those needs could change in an instant.
[00:34:34] Speaker A: Very wise man. Here. Stay current on what she needs today. So every five minutes you need to just text.
[00:34:41] Speaker B: I reckon there's a game too. I reckon there's a little bit of a gimmick here where you ladies are changing. I think he's got used to this. I would just change things up a bit and not tell him. Just when you're getting it sorted, all of a sudden there's a new thing to learn. But that's true, though, when you've got young babies and you just had a kid, that the whole demands of what you needed. Very different to once the children are a bit older, like, it's like, yeah, let's have quality time and watch a movie together. But when you've got kids and it's the first six weeks, who cares about movies? It's like, I just need help so you can take this kid off my hands.
[00:35:13] Speaker A: I can sleep.
[00:35:14] Speaker B: Very practical sort of stuff like that.
[00:35:16] Speaker A: I think we've talked about this before, but something my dad was particularly good at and something I expected in marriage without realizing I expected it till a wee way into marriage was he'd come home from work and say, what can I do to help?
[00:35:28] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:35:28] Speaker A: It was the first words out of his mouth, what can I do to help? And I just thought, that's what every father and husband did.
[00:35:32] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:35:33] Speaker A: So when you didn't come through the door and say, what can I do to help?
[00:35:35] Speaker B: No.
[00:35:35] Speaker A: Why doesn't he want to help me? It was an assumption I made.
And you came in the door and just thought, she's got this. I'll go do X or whatever.
And Mum would always say, no. Nothing. Most of the time, nothing. Sometimes she might say, Bring in some firewood, or whatever. But invariably he would then go and find a job to do that would help.
[00:35:54] Speaker B: Yeah, it's funny. Your dad is a good man like that.
I suspect probably it's hard earned and hard learned. I imagine he's probably learned a few lessons before you were aware of what's.
[00:36:05] Speaker A: Going on in his childhood. It was probably an issue.
[00:36:08] Speaker B: But you're right, he's a really good man. He is what I'd call a good, solid, stable, journeyman husband. And father, the kind of guy who doesn't have a podcast.
He's not a celebrity, you don't know his name, but he is one of the best fathers and best husbands that you'll see. He's not perfect. He's got his faults, we all do. But it's quite a profound and important thing to be that way.
Yeah. And that was my struggle. My struggle was getting my head into the groove of and it's still my struggle of getting my head into the groove of marriage in that way that your dad does. I do wonder, too, whether part of it him was he came home from a corporate office job, which he did with fidelity and did well, but didn't really light his tires. He wanted to be an engineer. Right.
[00:36:57] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:36:58] Speaker B: And so he didn't do engineering. He did corporate work and accountancy instead.
And then he comes home and it's sort of like there's something I think there is something liberating about giving yourself to your family. And so I imagine for him, too, it would have been quite a I.
[00:37:13] Speaker A: Think perhaps that's a struggle for a lot of men in some ways, is that work is quite important as a male, especially if you're the breadwinner or the main breadwinner.
[00:37:23] Speaker B: Well, we do things with our hands.
[00:37:25] Speaker A: But also that you seek your fulfillment there and you forget to seek it at home yeah. And you forget to seek it in your primary vocation, which is marriage.
[00:37:34] Speaker B: Yeah. Or you think it's a modern problem because it wouldn't have been this way back in the day. But we tend to think, oh, I'm the breadwinner, I've done my bit. And back in the day, it would have made more sense because the family would have been together more. The whole family was an economic unit, not just the father was an economic producer. Everyone we read this in the book of Proverbs, right, about the wife, the good wife who sits at the gate and sells the thing she's made so he has her own economic control and management. Yeah. And the family the children would have been part of that economic production as a family. The family was an economic community. We've robbed that of the family. Now it's like individuals in the family become economic producers and if they're lucky, they get enough money to sort of feed each other.
It's very different. But what I think that means is that probably once upon a time, the concept of how you participated in the life of the family, it would have been more integrated. Now it's like you work enslave away and then a lot of dads think, I've done my bit, I'm the breadwinner. But in actual fact, no, it's more than that, because the demand of winning the bread just so you can pay the mortgage and not die is so intense now that it's hard then to come back and whereas if there was more balance, there'd be a more sort of holistic integration of all of that sort of stuff. And so that's a bigger societal challenge. But yeah, it isn't. It a great article, though.
I think that question that he asks us to ask, and both parties should be asking it, I feel loved when make sure you ask that of each other.
You right. That little musical interlude, Katie, means that it's time for our moment of goodness, truth or beauty. And our scriptural reflection for the month. And as per usual, ladies before gentlemen.
[00:39:31] Speaker A: I really had to think about this. Not because I couldn't think of one, but because I had like, several.
[00:39:37] Speaker B: You got them saved up and all.
[00:39:39] Speaker A: Lined up, tucking them away in my mind. So I had to narrow it down. It took me a while. Yeah.
I was thinking about how our children can be witnessed to us. Yeah.
[00:39:52] Speaker B: Witness or witness?
[00:39:53] Speaker A: Witness.
[00:39:55] Speaker B: Both hands.
[00:39:58] Speaker A: And we were at a parish event a week ago for the Feast of Pentecost, and there was pedal crazy. Pedal mania with the crazy bikes.
[00:40:06] Speaker B: If you're not living in croschet, you may not have heard of pedal mania.
[00:40:09] Speaker A: You need one in your town.
[00:40:11] Speaker B: This guy is amazing. He basically engineers all these weird bikes and things and he turns up and for 2 hours he sets up like a marked off roped off area on a field, in the school field, and he unloads a truck full of the weirdest bikes and contraptions pedal in different ways. Yeah. And so some of them got to pedal backwards. Some of them got seats for three people. It's amazing. And you just hoon around and the.
[00:40:32] Speaker A: Kids just go crazy for 2 hours.
[00:40:34] Speaker B: It's an amazing thing.
[00:40:35] Speaker A: So that was there, and there was sausages.
[00:40:38] Speaker B: Pretty typical kids free lunch.
[00:40:40] Speaker A: And the weather was amazing for May, which that was pretty cool, but there was supposed to be a coffee cart. And I said to one of our friends who'd helped, well, she basically organized it. She's amazing. Beautiful skills for hospitality. And I said, oh, what happened to the coffee cart? And she goes, oh, look, they just texted. They texted. Last night was all confirmed. And then I haven't been able to get a hold of them this morning. Radio silence, basically. And I kind of did a little bit of a moped grumpy. What kind of business are they running?
Isn't it? And Nathaniel was sitting there, our ten year old, and he said, oh, but maybe something happened.
And our friend was she was so beautiful. She said that's really compassionate. Nathaniel. You're right. We should be thinking we should be hoping that everything's okay and not thinking the worst. And he was absolutely right. And it was such a good moment for both of us. We sort of looked at him gosh, a ten year old was calling us on here to actually think the best of people and not assume the worst. Yeah, that was pretty cool.
[00:41:39] Speaker B: That's beautiful. That attitude of gratitude. Instead of it's like, well, where's my coffee? Yeah, it's like, well, instead of the stuff, the object of my desire, what about the person that should be the object of my concern, not my coffee?
[00:41:52] Speaker A: That's right.
[00:41:52] Speaker B: Yeah. That's great. That reminds me of a story Andy Mullins told on the weekend about a family where they had family prayer time together. And one of the little boys said, let's pray for tonight for the conversion of Lady Gaga. And the dad had a chuckle, and he goes, what's wrong, dad? Don't you think prayer could help convert Lady Gaga? And the dad was really challenged by his kid. He's seeing the like, you've got to be like a little child to enter the kingdom of heaven.
[00:42:15] Speaker A: That's right.
[00:42:16] Speaker B: Beautiful. That's a great little well done, Nathaniel. Well done.
[00:42:19] Speaker A: You leading the way.
[00:42:20] Speaker B: That is great. Well, for me, my one's a family moment as well. But not our family.
It's Tina Turner. The great Tina Turner. It's simply the best. So that Tina Turner not changing.
No, different. We get different.
But I love Tina Turner's. Music Man I was there. I was there when Private Dancer came out and I used to listen to yeah, she had a hard life. I'm a Private Dancer, but it's a story about a woman who's caught in prostitution.
It's like her life was hard. Right? And this is where the story is so beautiful. So she died a couple of weeks ago, and in her eighty s. And what was amazing about her life, and a lot of people didn't realize this, was that back in 2016, she had a kidney ailment, and her kidneys were failing because of illness. And her and her husband, she remarried. So some people know about Ike Turner, and he was, by all accounts a thug and a bully and beat her and treated her really badly. They were Ike and Tina Turner. Right, originally. And for whatever reason, man, some of these guys in the music industry back in the day, just imagine it's probably still the same today, did not love their wives. Well, and so she leaves this abusive marriage and her second husband, this guy, Edwin Bach, great last name, Bach.
And he is? I believe he's Swedish. European, though they live in Sweden.
No, Switzerland, I think. And in Switzerland, they have legalized assisted suicide, euthanasia. So she starts preparing to end her life by assisted suicide, and her husband, Edwin Bach, he says to her, he intervenes and he, no, no. He says, I will give you one of my kidneys. He says, don't do this. He says, and this is the quote she said. He told her he didn't want another woman or another life.
What a man. What a man. And so she accepted this profound and loving gift. She could have said, no, I don't want this anymore. I want out. She could have had some crazy idea about wow. No, I don't want you to be subjected to me going down the hill. And so I'll have euthanasia. No, she doesn't. And she accepts his offer. She rejects assisted suicide, she takes this loving gift from him and then she had another six years of life and then she dies peacefully at home of natural causes a couple of weeks ago. And that's amazing. Like, there's so much in that. It's amazing. So first of all, the fact that she got six full years that she would have robbed herself of with the lie of euthanasia assisted suicide. Secondly, that a more humane option was available and in her mind it didn't register initially. So she's thinking thirdly, was that the loving gift of her husband, who actually his loving gift actually transforms everything.
And it's the beautiful self giving aspect of it as well. And the fourth thing for me is the self giving love of a husband who literally, like Christ, gives his body for the church. And ephesians we're hearing just a moment ago, he does that for her. And what's so beautiful is this is the absolute antithesis to her first husband and the way he treated her. He treated her as an object. He used and abused her. And this guy treats her as the pinnacle of his self giving love. This is the person I must give myself to, to the point of giving part of his body to her. And it's like a healing thing.
She actually experienced what authentic I was going to say husbandry.
What authentic spousal love is after being in a relationship where she saw nothing but authentic abuse. And it's so beautiful.
For me, it was just amazing.
[00:46:09] Speaker A: It also speaks to me of that choosing to suffer for another person, like kidney transplants. No laughing matter, right, for her or for him?
[00:46:16] Speaker B: No. I mean, he was slightly younger, but he's not young.
[00:46:19] Speaker A: But it's still hard. It's a hard ask that he chose to suffer for her and the love and the goodness that can come out of suffering and how often we try to avoid suffering when actually it can be so good and so beautiful.
[00:46:33] Speaker B: Yeah.
What a man and what an example. And there's so much in that that we need to learn from. So that was my moment of goodness. Truth or beauty. What about your scripture reflection?
[00:46:42] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, this one was a bit of a hard ask as well, to be honest. But in the end, I chose this one, which is something that came to mind over the weekend when we went to Andy's Talks. He talked about the virtues, obviously, as the building blocks for forming character and for bringing children to faith.
And so it was this sorry, I'm just scrolling.
[00:47:03] Speaker B: That's right. Scrolling is allowed.
[00:47:05] Speaker A: It's from Colossians, chapter three. Therefore, as God's chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive one another. If any of you has a grievance against someone, forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues, put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity. I mean, the whole chapter is awesome, obviously, but that in particular, I think, because he talked a lot about if we're not doing something out of love, what is our motivation? Our motivation should always be love.
[00:47:40] Speaker B: Yeah, great point.
[00:47:40] Speaker A: And that goes there's just so much to do in the family and bringing faith and virtue into a family setting. Above all, you have to have love.
[00:47:50] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:47:51] Speaker A: You need all those virtues. But love, passion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience, how much do we need those on a daily basis? But we need love above all.
[00:48:01] Speaker B: Yeah, totally. It's non negotiable, right? Yeah. That's beautiful. So for me, I had from Philippians chapter two, it says this from verse three onwards. So I've got Philippians chapter two, verse three to eleven. And it says this do nothing from selfishness or conceit, but in humility count others. Sorry, I was going to say each other. Others better than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God, a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant being born in the likeness of men and being found in human form. He humbled himself and became obedient unto death. Even death on a cross. So not just death, but a horrible death. Therefore God has highly exalted Him and bestowed on Him the name which is above every other name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. And I was thinking about that because obviously he's writing to the Philippian Church there. I've been reading, by the way, a bit, my early morning when I get up early and do my morning prayer and scripture study. I've been reading actually the Journey of Paul through Acts again, and it's quite amazing. So sort of getting that context. But here he is writing to this church in the Philippian Church. Philippi. But this, I thought, was really important to families, for any community that strives to be a Christian community, and the family should be Christian family is a, you know, do nothing from selfishness or conceit, but in humility count others better than you know. Don't look to your own interests, look to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves which Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped. And I thought, particularly for parents, we're like, well, I'm the boss around here. But in actual fact, your parental greatness will come through that self giving love. Now, we're not hippies. There are discipline moments that are needed and there are boundaries and your job as the parents to do that. But parenting those tough love moments should come on the back of a whole foundation of authentic self giving love that's not constantly tough love. If it's constantly tough love and nothing else, you've either got a really problematic child, which could be the case, or something's not quite right there, but your greatness will come. That humility. And also, I think when those tough love moments come, it gives you the actual power and the right to be a tough love parent. If your kid knows that your mum or your dad has sought your good and humility in every other way, and then this moment arrives, it's like there's a certain authority that they've been bestowed with. But if all they do is just stop that. Don't do that. Go to your room. It's less likely to be taken as seriously as they can be received in the right way.
[00:51:00] Speaker A: The openness of heart isn't there to receive.
[00:51:02] Speaker B: Yeah. It's like there's no integrity and kids see that. They know if there's no integrity 100%.
That's why we started talking about the Ironing story. That's why I realized as soon as I said to our twin daughters, no, because they were one of them was.
[00:51:18] Speaker A: Quite the tidy one.
[00:51:20] Speaker B: Yeah. Said, I'll Iron, and the other one said, no, I don't need and she'd taken her lead from older sister. And I thought, okay, in this moment now, what I've realized is there must be integrity and consistency. You can't have one family member who's just making up the rules and then everyone else is bound by another rule. Because why would I take Mum and dad seriously if it's arbitrary?
[00:51:38] Speaker A: That's right.
[00:51:38] Speaker B: So, yeah, that humility and that seeking the good of others is just so foundational. So, yeah, that really spoke to me this time around.
[00:51:46] Speaker A: Beautiful.
[00:51:57] Speaker B: Right, so it's time then to jump into our listener questions. We've got three great questions to look at today on this episode. The first is this. Hi, Brennan and Katie, do you have any tips for fostering a joyful spirit in our children and in the home? So much in the culture seems to weigh heavily on children's minds these days and it's so true, right? Because there's a lot of people now talking about this. Well, not a lot, but more people talking about this now.
The fact that childhood anxiety rates are.
[00:52:24] Speaker A: Going through post COVID and in Christchurch.
[00:52:27] Speaker B: Post earthquakes, and there's no doubt a lot of people now are starting to connect the dot with the absolute panic and paranoia about climate change that we've just thrown at our kids.
The world's going to die, the baby boomers have destroyed the world and it's all on you to put it right. Right, let's go outside and. Play basketball and it's like the kids are like, what?
It's pretty challenging. Right? So what would you say to someone who says this? Do you have any tips for fostering a joyful spirit in our children and in the home?
[00:52:56] Speaker A: Yeah, I do have a couple. I had a little think about this because I don't think that I am naturally a joyful person. And I think you sort of either have a temperament that's joyful that lends towards joyfulness or you don't, right. Not that black and white, but you know what I mean. Right. Sometimes you have to work at it. The first tip I had was you have to model it. You have to model joy. And when you have to model everything that you want your kids to become, to be and become, which is something that I've really been convicted on the last 48 hours. Thanks, Andy. But I've always sort of known it, but I think it's always good to be reminded we've got to model how we want our children to behave. They will learn what they see.
[00:53:39] Speaker B: Of course they will.
[00:53:39] Speaker A: And I have seen it over and over again in our know you see the bad stuff, obviously more obviously than the good stuff.
[00:53:46] Speaker B: Well, Nathaniel said to me one day, I said to him, he said a bit of a cuss word that he shouldn't have said. I said, no, Nathaniel, we don't say that. And then he just looked at me with such earnestness and he said, but dad, you said that the other day because I was working on something. I hit my hand with a hammer or something and I got really angry and I said a cuss word and I felt so convicted and I realized yeah, and I said I had to say to that man, look, I'm sorry, son, I shouldn't have I let you down way even saying that. I shouldn't have. I work on it. You work on it. Let's work on it together. But yeah, they do see.
[00:54:15] Speaker A: So as far as the joyfulness in particular goes, you have to model it. And sometimes if you're not necessarily a joyful person by nature, fake it till you make it, mate, you don't have a choice.
[00:54:27] Speaker B: Yeah, it's true.
[00:54:27] Speaker A: It means looking for things that give you joy and it means helping your children to find those things. We have a couple of friends, like beautiful people I can think of that I won't name, but I'm sure you'll think of the same people that are just naturally joyful. No matter what life throws at them, they're always smiling, they're always happy to see people. And I know I can be or come across Little Miss Mopey Pants.
I have to kind of push myself to find that joy.
So that's my first thing model it. The second thing on perhaps it should be the first thing is that joy is a gift of the Holy Spirit.
[00:55:03] Speaker B: It's a fruit of the Holy Spirit.
[00:55:04] Speaker A: So if it's a fruit of the Holy Spirit, then we ask the Holy Spirit to give it to us. That's where it comes from. It doesn't come from just eating your favorite chocolate bar. Oh, I feel joyful. You have to actually demand it, basically, and say, I want that, and we want it in our family.
[00:55:20] Speaker B: Yeah. So praying for it's important and cultivating this was going to be my point is, we often think of things like this, like these states as being things that somehow magically come or they're sort of just there, or we somehow access them. No, they actually have to be cultivated. And it's really, really important. You have to work on this. We've seen this in our home. If you don't, then so if you want a culture of joy and a joyful spirit in your children, you've got to cultivate that in your home. And you've also got to help them to see. Sometimes that means pointing out things like with our kids, I say, well, we should be really grateful for the fact that we got to go to church in peace today on a Sunday morning. Or we had this family picnic and there was no bombs dropping like there are in Ukraine. So we actually give them a sense of, oh, yeah. Instead of, what are we missing out on? Oh, my friend's got the latest thing. I don't have that thing.
[00:56:09] Speaker A: Do not let joy come from possessions.
[00:56:10] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:56:12] Speaker A: Number one mistake.
[00:56:13] Speaker B: What have you got? And celebrate that. And I think you've really got to cultivate joy, and it is a proactive thing. And I think here's the thing about joy as well, by the way. If you can hear that noise, it's the rain. It's suddenly just come pelting down here. Rain is beautiful. The rain brings me but we often, too think of joy as like a sort of self referential gratification type thing. Like you've just said, the rain brings me joy. And there are definitely things that bring us joy. But joy is also something much deeper than simple mere happiness or pleasure. You can have a state of joy even in the midst of crisis. Our youngest daughter is named after a lady named Edith Stein, and she was a Jewish philosopher, one of the greatest philosophical minds of the last 150 years, in fact. And she had a conversion to Christianity and became a Catholic and ended up becoming a Catholic nun. And because she was Jewish, though, the Nazis targeted Jews everywhere they could find them.
[00:57:11] Speaker A: She's Jewish and Catholic and a nun.
[00:57:12] Speaker B: Yeah. And so she ticked a whole lot of boxes. They hated she ended up being rounded up after the Catholic bishops in the Netherlands spoke out strongly against the evils of Nazism. So they started targeting Catholics as well. And of course, they found out she was Jewish. They'd been hiding her in a convent away in the Netherlands, and they found her there. She ends up going to auswich concentration Camp and she's killed there. But the final accounts we have the eyewitness accounts of her final days and hours.
She takes her joy with her into that darkness, and she's doing things like brushing the hair of children who often we know from the accounts that sadly, a lot of women with kids, they just broke down. The trauma of by this time, they knew what was coming and the trauma of it all just destroyed them. And kids were often left abandoned because their mums had fallen into sort of a state of catatonia or their own sort of breakdown, emotional breakdown. And so there's stories of her, she's gathering these children around and she's being a mother to them and she's brushing the hair and she's bringing them comfort and joy. She's singing hymns, apparently, as they're being led into the gas chamber. That's what joy looks like. And it doesn't mean that she's sort of joy is not a naive sort of I think in our cynical modern world, we tend to think of it that way. It's the sort of naive, happy clappy about everything. No, joy can be really present, too, in moments of great suffering. And I think the Irish do joy, funnily enough. I know this sounds strange, but they look darkness in the face and they're like, it's another day.
[00:58:35] Speaker A: It's just get on with life.
[00:58:38] Speaker B: Yeah. And so I think one of the ways to cultivate joy is to have a realistic outlook on life. Like, what are we owed? Well, we're not owed anything. We're not owed a single hour of our life. That's the first thing. We're not owed any of the privileges that we have in life. Memento, mori, I think matters. You are dust, and unto dust you shall return. If our children get that sense, the sort of a grounding that then helps them to see those moments that are really beautiful gifts in a different way, I think you do have to protect children, too.
[00:59:02] Speaker A: Yes, that was going to be my next point, that if you're concerned about the weight of the culture on your children, you need to don't wrap them in cotton wool. They're going to get enough of that. They're going to know the news, they're going to know what's happening outside in the big world. If they go to school just wherever they're going to hear it. They don't actually need it in the home. We don't watch the TV news or listen to it on the radio for this very reason. Because our kids there's some anxiety in a couple of them, but they know enough of what's going on. And we also want them to know, from the true perspective and from the perspective of Christianity, shedding light on the news, on the things that are happening in the world, not just what the news wants to tell them, which, in my opinion, isn't helpful. Most of the time anyway.
[00:59:48] Speaker B: Just the weather ideologically corrupted, so we.
[00:59:51] Speaker A: Don'T have the news on, and we actively try to avoid them watching it because it's just every time it's been on, it's led to yeah, and to.
[00:59:58] Speaker B: Be fair, I think a reason for that is our secular culture is very utopian now. And this is what happens in utopian cultures, because you cannot build a Utopia. It's an absolute absurdity. It cannot be built because human beings are flawed. We are fallen. We have a fallen nature. The line between good and evil runs through the heart of every human being. So there will never be a perfect utopia. You can't build it with technology, which we're trying to do at the moment, or politics. Those are the two ways we're trying to build those utopias at the moment. You can't do it. And so what happens is, secular society, it's falling into despair because it's like, it's not working. It's not working. And so I think what you've got to do is you've got to deliberately help your children have a vision of reality that's authentic the Christian vision of reality, negotiates evil and suffering and stuff very well. And I think you've also got to shield them. Maybe there's conversations that you need to have as parents that they don't need to be party to initially or find ways to have the conversation always ground them in hope. And I think you've got to deliberately correct the excess. So here's one thing we do know, that the climate is changing and there are things we're going to have to negotiate about that like, there's going to be parts of the world, for example, that are going to experience challenges to how they live their lives because of a changing climate. But what we've got now is we've got climate alarmism and it's over, off the charts. And you do probably have to step in as a parent and we've done this and sort of correct it, like if they're having a homework discussion and it comes up, or they believe the myth of overpopulation, that's not the problem. The problem is we don't have enough people, actually. And so you don't want to scare them the other direction, but you want to sort of say they're like, oh, my gosh, we got too many people, because I'm seeing young people who are buying into the ideology of what's known as antinatalism, which is like, well, we shouldn't have kids. And it's like, no, that's a terrible there's a loss of hope in there.
[01:01:38] Speaker A: Save the planet for no people.
[01:01:40] Speaker B: Have a baby. That's how you and I get it. There's all these other things, too, that weigh heavy, because it's not easy, is it? Because then the challenge, how do we afford the baby? But the point is that I think one thing you can do for kids is give them inspiring people of hope as role models, particularly younger role models, people who have lived in dark times, but have actually done amazingly courageous things. And like, Sophie Scholes, one of my favorites. And our kids know about Sophie Scholar and her brother Hans, and they get a sense of heroic courage in the midst of challenge. And you don't just sort of shut up shop and say, oh, well, we're going to die. It's all over, the climate will get us, and if not, some aliens or the AI will suck my brain out and turn me to a Terminator.
It's all doom and gloom. So I think you've got to actively again, it's actively fostering a culture of hope. And I think just get away from like you've said, get away from devices and go and do ordinary I was going to say mindless, but they're not I think they're joyful things where you don't have your but also, it's the.
[01:02:42] Speaker A: Simple mind engagement of simplicity, of joyful things, especially for young children. And, I mean, it's a little bit different for our older girls now, but for our younger kids, it's keeping childhood simple. And I thought to myself, now, when I think about joy and happiness and children, there's a great philosopher I think of, and I've read lots of his books lots of times, and his name is AA Milne.
[01:03:07] Speaker B: I'm halfway up.
[01:03:08] Speaker A: You've got to think about him, because sometimes you are going to be in a family of EORS. They might not be eeyores all the time, but they will be eels sometimes. And how do you jolly them out of that? And how do you keep that joy instead of things just being grump, grump, grump all the time? Like last night, Nathaniel had to dry the dishes. He wasn't that happy about it.
It was his chore for the week and he had to do it.
And he said, can you put the timer on? Because last week I used the timer to encourage him to see how fast he could do it. And he said, but what's my consequence if I don't get done in time? Because last week he was going to lose game time. And I said, you'll get tickled for five minutes and I can see this little light in his eye that thought, but I quite like being tickled. Yeah. So he deliberately took 1 second too long to see if he could get a bit of tickling. But that's just like this is a light hearted example, but he does well here's.
[01:03:54] Speaker B: One thing I've noticed with him, and boys are often this way, he enjoys having a rumble with me.
[01:03:58] Speaker A: Yeah, he does.
[01:03:59] Speaker B: That for him is I can see it now more and more, too, is that he's actually starting to test his strength. He doesn't realize this is what he's doing, but he sees his dad as the measure of, if I can defeat my dad, then maybe I'm growing, I'm getting stronger in the world. He's not thinking that way, but it's what's happening to him. And he loves that. It's this form of engagement with him. Now, as a dad, I've got two options. I always say push him. So I say, stop that. Yeah, I'm busy here saving the world.
[01:04:23] Speaker A: Somebody's wrong on the internet.
[01:04:25] Speaker B: I can take that moment and we have that jovial, all right, mate, let's see if you can get me to the ground, then go. And he loves that. And that's a moment of joy. His world is not just a bunch of people telling him that the boomers have ruined the planet, that the climate is going to get him, or the AI is going to suck his brain out and use him as a zombie android creature. There's actual moments of joy that he gets perspective out of that. Pull him out of that lie.
[01:04:52] Speaker A: And I looked up this poem of a a melns that I remembered called Happiness. This is how it goes. It's quite short. John had a great big waterproof john had great big waterproof boots on john had a great big waterproof hat john had a great big waterproof Macintosh and that, said John, is that. And I just think, like, for the simplicity of childhood. And obviously John's about to head out in the rain, but he's not dismayed about the rain. He's quite happy because he's got all his waterproof gear and he's going to go stomping around in some puddles and just to keep things in childhood simple, like know, to keep them pure. And the innocence of just going out in the rain and jumping in the puddles. And it reminded me of the first weekend of the first lockdown, where it poured and poured and poured. And we thought, how are we going to do this for six weeks? Like, how are we going to manage? And that Sunday evening, I said to Nathaniel and eLNO, put on your raincoats, put on your gum boots. The gutters need to be emptied. And they were out there for an hour in the rain and they came inside and they were so happy.
[01:05:58] Speaker B: Couldn't get enough of it.
[01:05:59] Speaker A: And then, thank you, Jesus, the sunshined for five, four weeks after that.
[01:06:03] Speaker B: I think you're right. And I think there's little things you can do, like each day, try and remember, even sitting around the dinner table, have dinner together, by the way, should do that. That cultivates joyfulness, I think. And what's one thing we can be actually grateful for this day? Everyone just share that. Try and do that even just once a week, if you remember. Give your kids little responsibilities that are there sort of thing. Like speaking of the rain, we have a gutter at the end of our cul de sac, which can sort of block up and it starts to sort of flood a little bit. And so Nathaniel has now taken it on his shoulders because he sort of gave him responsibility a couple of years ago about this because we had some quite big flooding around our area of someone had to go out and sort of check the drain. And so he came out with me initially, and now that's his thing. So he has a sense of response. Now, why is that important? I think it's important because it's actually teaching your children that they can actually have power over circumstance.
It's a simple thing. You either sit there and go, oh, the drain's flowing. What do we do? Or I have power to actually change the course of that water. Now, not always do if the flooding is too great, but what's happening more and more is our children are being disempowered. They're being saturated by scaremongering, and they.
[01:07:08] Speaker A: Feel, don't go outside when it rains.
[01:07:10] Speaker B: You'll get cold. They feel absolutely powerless in the face of the world. And we often have a tendency, as parents, I think, to want to wrap them in cotton wool. Don't do that fragility culture, which some really good authors, by the way, have talked about in the States, experts in this field, jonathan Hyde's, one of can't if you wrap your kids in cotton wool, man, if you want to talk about despair and losing joy, do that to them. It won't help. Give them people do about resilience. But I think very few people are serious in understanding what that actually looks like.
What actually needs to happen is you need to have children have a vision of reality that's bigger and a sense of empowerment, and it's all around the practical a sense of empowerment for a child is, I have some practical ways of engaging with the world. And that gives me a sense of sort of I'm not just a mindless player in all of this, but I think the big thing is you as parents, got to you've got to take responsibility for cultivating that.
[01:08:09] Speaker A: But it's a simple thing in the sense that you don't have to overthink it. No, it's just a tickle or put on a song and have a dance. And when you notice the spirit in your home changing for the worse, do something different. Yeah, ice cream for breakfast. Do something different.
[01:08:28] Speaker B: Well, sometimes you do need to actually course correct quite hard. So teenagers can get into that sort of I don't know, I wonder sometimes with a Nietzsche as a teenager. But they do.
Sucks, dad just sucks. But I think part of it is they want to stamp their mark on the world, and they sort of think they know better. No, you don't understand, dad. The world is bad because my teachers have told me that, and I know what's what. So sometimes you've got to just got to say, look, you know what, dear? Your teachers, they're great people, but they don't know everything, and the world is bigger than what they think. And X, y and Z And you say to them, I always say when I have moments like that, I always say, Trust me, your old dad, he knows a few things as well. And one day you'll realize he's not quite as. And it sort of gives them a sense of you're not trying to have an argument with him. So sometimes you got to do that and also be selective, like I said, about the type of conversations, like if you're struggling with financial issues, don't be in denial about that. But what I'm saying is maybe those conversations with your spouse, find positive ways to have them and have them once the kids are in bed. And if you are having those conversations and they're turning into massive arguments and the kids are hearing it and they're freaking out, then find support and help and strategies to not have an argument about a crisis. Find a way to navigate that together as spouses so that your kids are not left under the burden of feeling. Is this all collapsing? Because you don't realize this, but your kids are looking to you as The Rock. And we had an incident, actually, where we had some years ago, we were having a typical spousal disagreement about something and you're wrong, we don't call it.
[01:09:58] Speaker A: Argument, we call it making points.
[01:10:00] Speaker B: We were both making our points. Making points. Well, perhaps you'd like to go and do that thing. Wow, you'd like to just wash a roll then. It's one of those moments. And one of our kids started crying and we sort of both got shocked out of the moment turn and said, what's going on? What's going on? And one of our daughters said, Are you going to get a divorce? And we were able to say to them, no, we're just making points. We're Christians. As the old joke goes, we might kill each other, but there'd be no divorce.
And their face changed, they're lit up. It was like, oh, Mum and dad, my world is not crumbling.
But it was a real powerful reminder to be cautious about how you engage as a husband and wife around your children that does their world is built around that stability of the rock, of the family unit. And they sense when there's instability and when there's a lack of peace. And if they can come back to your home as the Rock, as the place of peace and prudence and cut through all the stupidity of alarmism? Trust me, you will do a lot to cultivate joy in the loss.
[01:11:00] Speaker A: And that sense of security, which I think will hopefully counter what they're hearing about the big, scary world that's falling apart around the ears.
[01:11:09] Speaker B: Well, and to be fair, the culture has collapsed. I think we're seeing symptoms of a collapse. We'll say it's collapsing, I think it has collapsed, we're seeing symptoms of the collapse and we're seeing a culture which has got so much money and technology that previously our culture would have just been conquered by someone else. But technology and money has changed that a little bit, and so we're sort of a bit naive about what's actually happened. So what I would say I think is really important I'll go back to that point again is actually give them examples of heroic virtue, people who heroic in cultures that were in crisis, and it gives them a sense that, so what if the culture is in crisis? A person can still be a person of virtue. They can still have hope, because if you're going to be courageous, like under the nazis, that means you have a even if you're not thinking about it, you have an orientation towards hope, otherwise you wouldn't take any action. And it gives them a sense of, yeah, I can be a hero in my I think it was just to finish with, I think it was Chesterton who said that we should tell our kids stories about dragons because you're not teaching them just that there's evil in the world, but you're actually teaching them that dragons can be fought and slain, and that's really, really important.
Okay, second question. This is an interesting one.
[01:12:13] Speaker A: Four words, but it's quite a big yeah.
[01:12:15] Speaker B: What constitutes human flourishing?
[01:12:17] Speaker A: Casey, you would answer that one. As soon as I read it, I was like, that's clearly for brendan.
[01:12:21] Speaker B: Brendan will answer this. Well, here's the thing. Two things I'd say about this, and I'll try to be quick. I'll try, I promise. Number one is this the term human flourishing is not used as much as it should be. When it is used, though often today, it is completely misunderstood by people. And people tend to think of flourishing and human flourishing, they tend to think personal happiness, personal gratification. That's not what this means.
[01:12:46] Speaker A: Personal wealth.
[01:12:47] Speaker B: Yeah, it's not now. Yes, social conditions, economic conditions are part of, or can be part of human flourishing, but you've reduced it in a really dangerous, reductionist way. If you just think, oh, my flourishing is because I've had people say this to me that, oh, well, if I do what I want to, then I'm flourishing, because it makes me happy. No, that's not what flourishing is. In fact, to flourish in life, you often have to do things that are actually hard and that suck.
[01:13:16] Speaker A: You flourish, ironically, ironing your school yes.
[01:13:20] Speaker B: I was going to say suffering, but for maybe for our teens, that is a big how dare you? Pilate has burdened me with the cross of ironing.
But your flourishing, your greatest flourishing, actually comes. Your character is built in the hardship and in the knowing people, and that they're teaching you to love better and grow you and all that. God does his best work in that space. So human flourishing is not an absence of suffering. It is not self gratification. It's not pleasure. So don't make that mistake. That's number one. Number two is in order to understand that, I think and this is where things can get a little bit tricky for people today. You've got to have a comprehensive, transcendent religious vision of reality, the human person and morality. So you need to understand what human dignity is, who God is, who we are. We are sacred image bearers. And that helps to understand what human flourishing is supposed to look like. You need to have a comprehensive and objective vision of morality. And that comes from a comprehensive religious vision of reality, which gives you what your moral law should be. Why? Because then you can understand that if I conform myself to what is good and what is true, I will flourish. Even if doing what is good and what is true is hard. That's right. I live in a sexually hedonistic culture, which we do, and it says just have sex with whoever you want to whatever desire you have, you should satisfy it and that will make you happy. That's a lie. You won't flourish if you do that. You put yourself in danger. You flourish by going back to that comprehensive, sacred vision of the person and reality and of course morality tied up in that and you recognize that an actual fact. I flacked. I'm not even sure what that is. A loving fact is a flak. Yeah.
There will be grammar lessons, a debrief after this podcast episode. You flourish by an actual fact, giving yourself and self giving love. So I'm not going to be promiscuous with multiple partners.
Some people think that's flourishing because I'm happy having lots of sex with lots of different people. No, your flourishing is found. So you've got to understand what the Greeks would call teleology, the end. What is the natural end, the good end of the sexual act. It is the bonding of spouses, it is the production, the creation of new, the gift of human, not production. So that's all. It's not production of new factory line of new human life. And when you cooperate with that and you give yourself to that, that talos, that teleology, that end, you flourish. When you fight that, you don't flourish. So what is the end of the human person? Well, there's a lot of them, but really, I mean, the one end of the human person is rest in the life of God.
And so rest is going to be fundamental to our flourishing, peace, the fruits of the spirit, all that sort of stuff. So it's really important. The big mistake I think people make, as I said, is that they think flourishing means my personal happiness. It doesn't. It's not the same thing at all. And when you cooperate with goodness, when you cooperate with truth, you actually discover your freedom. You become freer and you start to flourish. Same for a group, same for a family, same for a society. And what harms that is when you think that license is freedom to do whatever you want, that's where you find your flour. No, you don't find your flourishing at all. So. Yeah. Hopefully that answers. Did you want anything?
[01:16:26] Speaker A: My answer was going to be that to truly love is to flourish as a human words. But the same thing.
[01:16:37] Speaker B: Let me just add to that. Love God, love neighbor.
[01:16:41] Speaker A: Yes.
[01:16:42] Speaker B: So love God, love neighbor, families and spouse, they're all part of that. You're right.
[01:16:46] Speaker A: That's right. And I think a really good example of this in my lifetime has been.
[01:16:50] Speaker B: J. P. Two Pope jumpel II for those who are not Catholic listening, carl Votiba.
[01:16:54] Speaker A: If we want to get really down to Polish Pope, just what you spoke about there with it's not a life without suffering. And 100% like he came up through World War II, through the Nazis in a hidden seminary behind the Iron Curtain.
[01:17:09] Speaker B: Yeah. So two major turnies pope at 58 younger last hundred years, he survived the.
[01:17:14] Speaker A: Two major tyranies and took on the burden of the Papacy.
[01:17:19] Speaker B: Can I say something? Two fun facts about that rude that's going on the list for the deep breath. Two fun facts. One is that you often used to say, see Pope John Paul II, when he would pray at public worship and public services and stuff, he would lie a cruciform, like the shape of a crucifix at the front of the sanctuary, on the floor facing the altar and stuff like that, and he'd pray like that. Apparently. He'd prayed, like, at 05:00 a.m. Every morning for an hour like that. That came from apparently when he was in this underground seminary. The Nazis raided it one day and he had no choice but to run up and hide in the attic. He'd lay down flat in this cruciform position and just prayed, and they never found him. And that became his method. Of the other story I heard was this from apparently one of his personal secretaries said this.
His hand was accidentally one day slammed into a shutting car door. They slammed his hand in the door of probably an old Birmingham Mercedes or something, heavy door or some Italian car. They slammed it and apparently what he said was, thank you, God, for loving me in this way. Wow. And I'm like, oh my gosh, I've got a lot to learn.
[01:18:21] Speaker A: Even when he was shot, right? Yeah.
The beauty of that, he took that assassination attempt and he used it for good. He forgave his yeah, it's true. Tempted assassin, so love and suffering. But he flourished before our eyes. Really. We were fortunate to be able to see him on the screen. I saw him in person a couple of times.
But even in his flourishing, he loved and he gave himself in his flourishing. Well, that's how he flourished.
[01:18:54] Speaker B: That's the paradox. Because the society says you'll flourish by seeking it. The Christianity says no, you give yourself away. So Nietzsche was wrong. Nietzsche says, what doesn't kill us makes us stronger. That was one of his big maxims. Christianity says, well, what kills us actually, makes us stronger. So it's self sacrifice and it's self giving love that actually is the thing that really does radically. And so you don't seek out the flourishing. You seek out self giving, and then the flourishing is found that way.
So, yeah, that's great. That's a really good point. Distilling it down. How do you love? Love God, love neighbor, and have your loves ordered correctly. That's the way you flourish. If you're loved, you can have good loves, but they're disordered. So you have a love for Christian ministry and Evangelism, but you are robbing your family. That should be your first love.
[01:19:42] Speaker A: You can have a love for good food, and food is a good and it's just from God. But if you love it too much, it's not good, and it doesn't help you fly.
[01:19:49] Speaker B: That's right. Yeah, exactly. So have your loves and make sure that wisdom is part of that, too. So, yeah, that's give to God what's owed to Him. Give to your neighbor what is owed to them. It's love. It's love. Love, love. Truth, goodness, beauty. Third question how do personalities work together to make a great marriage? And how do you value differences? Maybe looking at someone who's recommended the Clifton strength finder. Now, do you know about Clifton?
[01:20:13] Speaker A: I've done the Clifton strength finder.
[01:20:15] Speaker B: So have I. We didn't do it for marriage reasons. I did it for a ministry team that I'm involved in, and you do the same for those who don't know much about it. We won't go into great detail, but Clifton, what's really great great about it is it recognizes particular characteristics or strengths you have. You might call they are leadership strengths. And then what it does is it has a model where it looks at a whole team. And so you could do this in a marriage, and you realize our strengths here's, where our strengths complement each other, here's where they clash. If you've got the same sort of strengths here's why we and what it does that's great about something like Clifton is, I guess, much like the love languages, it gives you an understanding of why you maybe fight or argue the way you do or why you struggle to negotiate certain things. Because it's giving you a sense of where your strengths and weaknesses are. So that's one thing. But Katie, how do personalities work together to make a great marriage, and how do you value the difference?
[01:21:06] Speaker A: Great marriage, a great we're still working on that part. Yeah. Yes. Should be said. We're not experts.
I just know you need to look at where you compliment each other, and you need to be able to in humility say you are better at X. Yeah, that's true. So, generally speaking, I will bow down to your prior knowledge and expertise in this area.
[01:21:31] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:21:33] Speaker A: And I need to get better at why.
And I will make an effort to do that.
[01:21:38] Speaker B: Why?
[01:21:38] Speaker A: What why?
Like asking Xx or Y or Z.
I need to get better at doing something, so I will try and work on getting better at that. I need to get better at loading the dishwasher so all the bowls have.
[01:21:54] Speaker B: Their I feel like this is a rather pointed conversation.
Yeah, that's a good point. I think the first thing to recognize is that you're going to have generally speaking, you are going to have personality differences. I know very few marriages where people are absolutely sympathic. They do happen.
[01:22:11] Speaker A: But personality is exactly the same.
[01:22:12] Speaker B: No.
[01:22:13] Speaker A: Because in actual fact but weird, actually, it doesn't seem like it will.
[01:22:15] Speaker B: No. And opposites attract. Yes, you are drawn, but in saying that the things that are your greatest strength will also be your greatest weakness.
Well, not true. Wherever your virtue is, that's also where your vice countervice will be found. And also often the things that irritate you most in your spouse are your problems.
[01:22:36] Speaker A: That's right.
[01:22:39] Speaker B: It's funny. We are both very strong, intelligent people. Well, you are, dear. I'd like to think of myself as intelligent. No, but we are. We're both strong, intelligent, clearly enunciating, communicators, and so that's a great strength. It's also one of our dynamite weaknesses, because it's like, I'll tell you what's wrong, and you're like, I'll tell you what's wrong.
[01:23:00] Speaker A: I'm going to go Google that up right now.
[01:23:02] Speaker B: Yeah. And so we both have a tendency that you see how that can overstep I often get frustrated. I'm like, Hold on a minute. She's acting like she's the blooming intellectual boss of me. And at the same time, that's because I'm often acting like I'm the intellectual boss of you.
We see a weakness. It's actually our weakness. We project onto the other. So I think the first thing is to recognize you do have personalities, and differences are actually not a bad thing.
[01:23:26] Speaker A: That's right. No, differences are great. Yeah.
[01:23:29] Speaker B: Because I think too many people freak out and they think, oh, I think when we were first married, you don't even remember this. I know we had that argument about whether rice cupboard and I know for you, because you said to me, you're like, oh, my gosh, did we make a mistake getting married? And I was too late there anyway, but we're in this for life, baby. But I was like, no, rice or no rice. I thought to myself, what would my dad do? Tom Malone, what would he do? God rest his soul, and Tom Malone, I did what he would do. And he'd say, no, it's okay, dear. It's fine. This is just the nature of I didn't even really fully appreciate what I was saying back then, but I was right. It's just the nature of the thing. And we have different ways and different spaces. I've learned now there's a space that Katie has claimed as her own, and I was trying to claim it as my own space. So it was like, you wanted that sort of nesting.
The domestic space is yours. And I was like, no, I will decide where the race goes around here, thank you. And it was like, this is my get out of my space. So I had to recognize and it was sort of finding some of those boundaries. That's a factor as well, I think.
[01:24:31] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:24:32] Speaker B: How do you value differences? I don't know. That's a hard one, isn't it?
[01:24:36] Speaker A: Because sometimes you sort of put up with yeah. But you maybe also need to recognize where those differences are a good thing. Like I was going to say, I quite like managing the budget. I don't always like managing the budget, but it is my strength. Yeah, you really appreciate that. I do that, but you actually let me know that you appreciate it and say, oh, you and your money, and stop telling me not to spend money. And you actually say, I appreciate that you do that for our family and that you serve our family in this way.
[01:25:03] Speaker B: Yeah. It's funny that, because I feel a little bit like, oh, man, if you were to go to be with Jesus a bit before me, I could be in real trouble with all these things.
[01:25:11] Speaker A: That you there's a spreadsheet, babe.
[01:25:15] Speaker B: I'd look at this thing's alive, it's AI it knows more than I do about our budget.
[01:25:22] Speaker A: Just get dad in here.
[01:25:24] Speaker B: Yeah, he probably would help. How do you value difference? I think what you've got to do is you've actually got to have a healthy respect for the difference. So I think I'm getting better at this. It's always a struggle, though, but it's recognizing, you know what that thing that I find frustrating, that difference is actually really important. So when we were first married, that whole thing of I wanted to have the argument, you want to go and contemplate, then that's actually a really wise thing. I saw it as a hindrance. The difference, though, was really important, so funny enough for both of us, but particularly I saw in your going away to contemplate was actually allowed you to come back more level headed and calm about an important disagreement of conflict we'd had. So you'd been considered and you had thought out actual arguments and points to make and it was calm. The Irish Staush is actually not always the good thing at all.
[01:26:20] Speaker A: No.
[01:26:20] Speaker B: In fact, often it's not. So that you got to value the.
[01:26:23] Speaker A: Difference goes on to other areas as well, where you'd want to maybe buy a thing or spend X amount of money on something we actually needed. And it was fair enough. But you'd come in and say, this is going to cost that much and I'd sort of fly off the handle. Whereas if I could go away, you learned to come in and say, Please, can you think about this? I've done the research. This is how much it'll be. This is the best option. And I'd say, okay, I'll come back to you in this amount of time, then it worked quite well.
As opposed to just barreling in and saying, we're going to buy this thing.
[01:26:52] Speaker B: And that's having the humility, the virtue of humility, to recognize I'm not the smartest spouse in the room. We're smart together.
[01:26:59] Speaker A: That's right.
[01:27:01] Speaker B: And if you both have that attitude, you'd be fine. If one person has it and the other person doesn't, you're in trouble because then they become a subservient sort of slave. But you recognize so you've recognized. There is prudence in this guy who is sort of saying, we just got to do certain things.
And so I curb your excess and you curb mine.
Your tendency may be to research too much and not make a decision when it needs to be made. My tendency to make an impulsive decision. They both need to be curved. There needs to be a golden mean.
But you've got to value the difference. You've actually got to say, that is valuable, that she takes that approach and that I take this approach and together. And sometimes you have to call each other on and just say, look, I think we need to make a decision. Yeah.
[01:27:38] Speaker A: We need to make a decision, or.
[01:27:40] Speaker B: We need to spend more time discerning.
[01:27:42] Speaker A: Do we really need yeah.
[01:27:43] Speaker B: Yeah. Because I've plenty of I've you're my discernment yardstick often tell people I come with some crazy idea, and Katie says, yes, dear, okay.
And now she knows to give me the time she's learnt. Don't have an argument with him about how crazy that idea is. Just let him come to that conclusion by and some of your crazy ideas.
[01:28:01] Speaker A: Have been awesome, though.
[01:28:01] Speaker B: That's right. And that's when I know standing in.
[01:28:03] Speaker A: One of them well, the other office.
[01:28:05] Speaker B: Yeah, that's right. And that's when I know because that's funny. That was an example, wasn't it? You were like, what an external office on our property? Like a Porticom? What are you talking about? But it was the right decision. Right. I could see something, but even I didn't really fully appreciate it. I saw something but didn't quite get it, and then vice versa. There's been things where you've seen that I didn't quite understand, and then I've realized, oh, no. So, yeah, that's that recognizing the difference and having the humility to go with that.
[01:28:31] Speaker A: I think also thinking that differences can be a real blessing in how you parent your children as well. Sometimes they need your approach. Sometimes they need my approach, depending on the situation.
[01:28:41] Speaker B: I've noticed that with Nathaniel.
[01:28:42] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:28:43] Speaker B: And hopefully it doesn't feel too onerous on you. But I've noticed sometimes I try to do this as lovingly as I can. But I'm like, man, my wife's, this beautiful woman who loves our boy, he's the baby boy, but I'm like, now is the time for dad to kick in the chief and come in and say, look, son. No. And you're like, oh, my boy. And I'm like, I'm looking up and going, My warrior, you know what I mean? And you're going, that's my boy. And there's that sort of tussle because he's got to that age where it's sort of and it's interesting to see that dynamic. But you're right, there's that difference. And I think you've got to work with each other and I think don't sweat the small trying. There's probably something happened yesterday, the day before, and what I can't do and you can't do is go, oh, my gosh, I'm going to fixate on that. Katie came in and did this thing, or Brendan came in when I was and then all of a sudden it becomes this big burning volcano beneath their relationship. You just got to go.
[01:29:34] Speaker A: It's just you have to teach yourself to say when you're annoyed by something the other person has done, or a way they've behaved or whatever is to say, well, I'm sure that at some point in the last 24 hours, I have been just as annoying in another way.
Again, it's the humility, isn't it, to.
[01:29:50] Speaker B: Say, and it comes back to communication, because the danger too, there is that's absolutely right. And you're spot on. And I think my danger in that regard is to say, oh, well, we don't need to talk about anything because I'll just forget it, and you forget it.
What you got to do is you got to have the humility to let go of the personal grievance. And I've been wronged and I have a right, but also recognize, okay, well, at some point we'll have a conversation, or maybe this is a bit more serious, we need to have a conversation. And you can't just sort of walk away from everything and be indifferent about.
[01:30:19] Speaker A: Definitely if the niggles keep niggling don't just keep ignoring them. You need to actually have but you're.
[01:30:25] Speaker B: Right, you can't have that conversation from a point of personal grievance and I'm the wrong party and I'm perfect and you're not. So you've got to have both. Yeah. So hopefully that makes sense, folks. Yeah, we're like, we don't know what we're doing, but here's our advice.
Okay, folks, well, that's another episode done and dusted for this month. We're sort of trying to juggle because, Katie, you're about to start a sort of we've got a little bit another temporary contract, need to bring the money in. So we're doing so next month. We'll just have to juggle around how we do it. But, yeah, we will be back next month with another episode. Do you want to say anything before we wrap up?
[01:31:02] Speaker A: No, I'm good.
[01:31:03] Speaker B: You're very good. Well, I'll give you a few moments to think about that. That was one of those expectations. That wasn't a request, but while we were thinking about that, don't forget, folks, that if you want to support our work, our ministry work, you can do that lifenet.org NZ. There's a donate button and it teaches you, teaches you it shows you, teaches you the way. It's an AI. Just tell it your bank card in your Pin and it will, so don't do that. So it's got a donate page on the website and it tells you the bank account details and how to make a contribution. One off donation or ongoing AP. All of it helps patreon.com left Foot Media is another way become a $5 monthly patron. And your questions and your comments. And particularly, remember Andy Mullins. We're going to interview him. So if you've got questions for Andy around virtue. So parenting with character, parenting with faith in the family, and like, neuroscience maybe as well. Related to that, not just what is the plasticity of the human brain? Try and apply it to parenting. Do you think AI will control our neurons?
[01:32:02] Speaker A: He might appreciate questions like that. You might be like, yes, nice one, my lovely answer.
[01:32:07] Speaker B: But we're going to have more on. So we want your questions, please. Please send us your questions.
Yes. So do
[email protected] NZ. Or remember the new URL, the littleflockpodcast.org the littleflockpodcast all one word lowercase.org OIG. That means you can now share this podcast with your friends. Give them that link and all the episodes are there. They can listen, they can pick all of your friends, do spam, or they can listen online.
But, yeah, send us your questions and send us your questions for Andy. And when we do that interview, and also just send us your questions in general. And, yeah, do you want to say anything now that I've given you a bit of space? All the things you've said, all the things you did. Well, let's go and do our three part minstrel show inside. Let's see what's happening with the kids on this king's birthday.
[01:32:52] Speaker A: Queen's birthday.
[01:32:53] Speaker B: Oh, queen's yet is Quing's birthday, folks, thanks again for tuning in. Don't forget, live by goodness, truth and beauty, not by lies. And we will see you next time on The Little Flock.
[01:33:04] Speaker A: See, everybody.
The little flock is a joint production of the LifeNet Charitable Trust and Left Foot Media.
[01:33:18] Speaker B: If you enjoyed this show, then please help us to ensure that more of this great content keeps getting made by becoming a patron of the
[email protected] Left Foot Media.
[01:33:29] Speaker A: Thanks for listening. See you next time on The Little Flock.
