Dennis Tuuri

Let’s say a couple of things. First, in terms of the ages for the games this afternoon, we are adopting the Jewish or oriental method of gauging, which means it’s from a point of conception. So, 12 year olds, really, that’s okay. Well, they’re basically now using 12 as a guideline. I think maybe two—I don’t know how we’re going to do this. It’s not—we have an older couple here who might give us a lot of wisdom on some of the input relative to the discussion.

So not really room at the table, but a power to one of you like to come forward and maybe sit up here and field questions. I don’t want to put you on the spot. You want to stay back there. All right. So I have prepared a few notes. You don’t need here at all. This looks like you focused on and then I’m going to have Victor lead us to Psalm 23 and also Psalm 150 as we begin. So Vic, come forward—Psalm 23 and Psalm 150.

Okay, page four. You got to spit a spin. I don’t have one. Nothing shall I lack. In green pastures he makes me lie down. Besides quiet waters he leads me. My soul he restores. He leads me in righteous paths for his name’s sake. Even though I walk in a valley of deep darkness, I fear no evil for you are with me. Your rod and your staff they comfort me. You prepare for me a table in the presence of mine enemies.

You anoint my head with oil. My cup overflows. Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life. And I shall dwell in Yahweh’s house to the end of days.

Psalm 150. Praise the Lord in his house with one. Praise him in the extent of his firmament. Extol his wondrous way. Praise him for his mighty. Praise him with the trumpet of the harp majesty. Praise him with the ro. Praise him with the excellence. Praise him with the sounding symbols.

Let the flashing symbols ring to the praise of God the king. Praise him with a mighty sound. Let your voices shake the clouds. Sing his praises with rejoicing. All that grieveth.

Let’s remain standing while we pray. Father, we thank you for this new morning that opens up in front of us. We thank you, Lord God, for the subject we’re to address here. We thank you, Father, for turning the hearts of the fathers to the children and even in terms of guiding of them into relationships where they themselves shall become fathers with hearts to their children.

We pray Lord God for our children that their hearts would be tuned to the fathers that they would want to hear the instructions that fathers and mothers have to bring to them in this vital area of their lives. We pray to that end that your kingdom would be advanced that glory would be given you all to your word and instructions in these matters. In Christ’s name we ask it. Amen.

Thank you. Seated.

You know, Psalm 23 is a good psalm to begin with because really what we’re trying to do is offer shepherds over our children. And Psalm 23, the recipient of the shepherd’s care is glad and resting in that care. So, young people who are now reaching into adulthood, single ones who are already adults, know that all we’re trying to do is provide that good shepherding of you and rest in that shepherding. Maybe differences, maybe questions, tensions may arise, but let them be in the context of knowing that as undershepherds of the great shepherd, the Lord Jesus Christ, your parents are taking upon themselves a tremendous task. Be patient with them. Bear up in their infirmities and receive their godly instruction. Prepare your heart to be shepherded and led and rest in that shepherding.

I wanted to say one thing before we begin this panel discussion. This is primarily now about the qualification side of the question and I wanted to mention last night that I used Mr. Andrews’ list of qualifications at one point in the talk and he had a list of eight for men and two for women. You know, there’s lots of models, there’s lots of books, there’s lots of sets of qualifications. I made some statements supporting that basically—I’m trying to understand what he’s telling us about that. But other points were raised in the discussion and later in personal discussions as well where it’s very important as we rear up our daughters to train them, you know, in terms of righteousness, to train them in terms of life, to train them in being submissive to the leading of the Lord Jesus Christ—sons and daughters of Christ and not sons and daughters of bile. So we don’t want to just say all we want to do is train our daughters to be submissive to whoever they’ll marry. We want to raise them up to be godly dominion women as Proverbs shows and we certainly want to look for more extended qualifications as well.

If you have a pagan girl who’s very submissive, your son couldn’t marry according to what our church and the scriptures teach. It would be an unequal yoke. So, she must—and of course, Mr. Andrews’ response would be—that she must be properly submissive to her husband, already be submissive to the great shepherd, and be a Christian and exhibit that growth in grace. So please don’t take that Andrews’ model is the model. It’s one model of many. It’s one way to look at it. It’s one facet of the jewel of godly womanhood as we prepare our daughters for marriage.

Okay. So, I think Howard, you have some prepared remarks. Is that right? Yes, sir. All right. I have just kind of rediscovered the Westminster Larger Catechism again and I find that it has a lot of good things to say on this topic and I just thought I’d recap one question from the larger catechism on the seventh commandment.

Thou shalt not commit adultery. And in the seventh commandment, or in the larger catechism, it speaks of the duties required in the seventh commandment are. And it goes through the list, but then it says the sins forbidden in the seventh commandment besides the neglect of the duties required are. And it goes through a list. And I thought this might be helpful to talk about a discussion around some qualifications and these are that are forbidden.

Adultery, fornication, rape, incest, sodomy, and all unnatural lusts. All unclean imaginations, thoughts, purposes, and affections. All corrupt or filthy communications or listening thereto. Wanton looks. Impotent or light behavior. Prohibiting of lawful and dispensing with unlawful marriages. Allowing, tolerating, keeping of brothels and resorting to them. Entangling vows of single life. Undue delay of marriage. Having more wives or husbands than one at a time. Unjust divorce or desertion. Idleness. Gluttony, drunkenness, unchaste company, lasciviousness, songs, books, pictures, dancings, stage plays, and all other provocations to or acts of uncleanness either in ourselves or others.

So, you know, in summary, it’s really the self-indulging in sexual acts and impure thoughts outside of the God-ordained state of marriage.

And I think it’s interesting in the catechism that it says “seventh commandment, thou shalt not commit adultery.” And in the catechism they talk about things like gluttony and drunkenness. And we say, well, what does that have to do with adultery? And I think the idea here is that what you’re trying to do is that you’re trying to exercise self-control. You’re trying to control yourself to do that which is correct according to the scriptures.

So if you are raising children or if you yourself are considering marriage and you’re getting up in your years and you see you have a tendency towards things such as eating too much or drunkenness or wanting to hang around people that are unchaste or you know if you find yourselves liking to watch shows like Jay Leno and David Letterman where oftentimes those things are off-color sexual innuendo—and I’m not saying that scripture says you can’t watch those—but I mean if you find yourself enjoying those types of things I think the catechism says that you’re going down the wrong path.

And then this book that I have talked about some questions that might be able to ask yourself just in doing an evaluation in this area. And I’m just going to read a couple of them here to get the flavor of it. Do you help others to honor the institution of marriage? Encourage others to be faithful and attentive to their spouses only. Are you attentive and loving to your spouse? So much so that he or she would not—and I wear earplugs.

I can’t—are you attentive and loving to your spouse so much so that he or she would not be enticed by the attentions of another? Are you consistently careful to preserve not only your own purity and chastity, but also that of others? Do others observe your chaste and respectful behavior in 1 Peter 3:2 and want to follow your example? Are you careful to feast your eyes and other senses on that which is clean, wholesome, and edifying, upon that which builds you up spiritually as Job can you say, “I have made a covenant with my eyes. How then could I gaze at a virgin?” Job 31:1.

Are you self-disciplined regarding your use of food, drink, and recreation? Do you habitually keep your natural appetites under adequate control, so much so that you will not be ruled by them? Do you choose companions that practice and love clean living and clean speaking? Do you enjoy the fellowship of Christians who practice and live out their faith? Do you dress modestly so that others are not stimulated to think sexual thoughts because of you? And if you have naturally strong sexual desires, do you recognize that the Lord has laid upon you the necessity for marriage, that you are called to a marriage state? Matthew 19:11-12.

However, are you seeking a marriage only in the Lord and which we’ve talked about amongst believers? Do you arrange the details of your life and place yourself in situations that make it easier for you to think clean, chaste thoughts and practice unquestionable behavior? Do you burn the bridges over which temptation is inclined to reach you? Do you put on the Lord Jesus Christ, make no provision for the flesh in regard to its lust? Romans 13:14.

And then there’s a number of scripture verses here that address this issue. And then there’s a whole bunch of questions. And this book I have goes through all the commandments and has those types of questions. So, oh, it’s, L. Lockman’s, The Believer’s Delight.

So, I think that’s essentially what I wanted to say, Dennis, in terms of qualification. I have another dowry story. Mentioning last night wives use the dowry—wives’ different uses of the dowry. And I mentioned facetiously the lawnmowing thing, but that was a good thing—a blessing to me from my wife. Another thing she did with the dowry money that I’ve been giving to her over the years a couple years ago was to buy me a big TV. That’s no big deal to most of you, but my wife does not like TV and she had to struggle long and hard to do that because my eyes are a little weak. It was a bigger TV and it costs more money.

But the other thing she did in addition to giving me this TV was she made a little calligraphied a little sign from the scriptures—a verse that talks about how I’ll put no unclean thing before my eyes. And she placed that on top of the TV, you know. And we need those kind of reminders. We need those kinds of reminders of the law of God to regulate, as Howard talking about here, a proper use of entertainment or tools that can be instructive and helpful to us but can bring great damage into the household as well.

So I appreciate that very much Howard. I did notice you kind of skipped over in my reading the rendering I have of that things that are prohibited—the immodest apparel phrase. I think you’re fairly modestly dressed today but you know in terms of apparel—in terms of apparel, it’s very important to understand the relationship with that as well as Howard’s been saying and read in the positive statements that we need to dress modestly. And in terms of qualifications for courting, these things are all in there as you evaluate people how well they’re doing with this list. So, I appreciate that very much.

Dave, you want to say anything to begin with? No. Okay. Howard, you want to say something to begin with? Okay.

We’ve had a real nice week. Of course, you all know how it started, but we lay out plans and then God has to establish them. We were going to graduation Friday night and our son and son-in-law and daughter came yesterday and told us there will be no graduation that we would go to because of sin in the family of our oldest grandson.

And so we have that to face when we go back now. And they came here yesterday and we prayed together in the chapel in the room in here. And he asked us to forgive him for fornication that he had with the girl. And it’s a long story, but it’s very obvious to me that the sins of the father are passed on to the third and the fourth generation, it says. And sin like that was in our relationship early in life and we thought we had dealt with that and everything was going real well.

But you lose your opportunities to talk to your grandchildren even if you don’t do it right with your children. So, you need to start with a foundation and you need to build that as you go along. And if you don’t do that, then these things will come back to haunt you. And because of our sin, well, then God has let that come and we will need to be going from here starting over and maybe it will not happen with the rest next generation with God’s help.

Repentance doesn’t, as Howard said, always necessarily bring immediate relieving of the consequences. And we had tried to get—we had repented a long time ago of this, but you still have the consequences. And we did unwise things with our children. We did not have any training whatsoever. There was never even a book out to teach us. And the church we actually were in was very dis—not helpful at all in this situation. In fact, their children were—we were into measuring men by men and our children were far better conditioned even by the parents in the church’s words.

So you know you could be self-righteous about that. But God one night showed us that we were measuring our children by the world and they look good compared to the world and compared to the church’s kids, the other people, the elders and everything. And God showed us that we were spiritual midgets. Our children were spiritual midgets. And we all had leprosy. And if that doesn’t humble you, it should.

As parents, if there’s anything you want, you take care of it now. This is your elders and your pastor. Yes, we men as we all of us are fleshly, but they are trying to do the very best. And we’ve watched you for the last 10 years and it’s wonderful. And this new thing with building some foundation with your children is very proper. It’s the only church I know that’s addressing it possibly in the whole nation at this point—is the whole church. And yes, we are feeling the elephant’s leg at this point blindly going down this.

But we are here to tell you that we tried to warn our daughter and her husband and our grandson they would not really let us through to our grandchildren to do that because this homeschooling thing and all that’s very, you know, just not necessary. We can tell our kids and train him and then turn him loose for recreational dating. No, you cannot. You cannot, young people. That handheld is the beginning of a downward slide in the relationship.

And our grandson has been very humbled by this. In fact, he’s gone around his parents to do even more than what’s required of him because he’s so humbled. Today he will—he’s already asked forgiveness of the father. Said if the baby is indeed his because he caused the girl such pain when he became guilty and severed the relationship that she in hurt went out and got involved with another young man. So he’s our grandson waiting this out.

He doesn’t know if this is his baby, but he has gone to the parents. He has said he will take care of this responsibility. He’s going today to the—he went to his teachers yesterday and ask all our forgiveness in this Christian school we’re talking about in the Christian school here. He’s going today to go before the board and ask their forgiveness and he’s having them call the old school and going before them. He’s going over to his other grandparents and ask forgiveness for bringing shame on the family. And so he’s doing all the right things and we’re excited about that, you know, on top of all this other. We’re very excited about what God’s doing.

And our prayer was and we knew I knew more than anybody in the family. I think I began to caution Linda and Kim and all of us that this was not, you know, this was going to be a consequence soon because of this laxness on his parents’ part. And so it was not at least a shock as the other thing we had the first week. But we’re looking forward maybe to now some—well, the father is very humbled and he has asked our forgiveness and we can see that he has. While our daughter has not yet been willing to bow her knee, he has now taken control of his family and that’s what we’ve always wanted him to do. He advocated his position and our daughter rose up and took it and at this point she’s remorseful because it’s hard for you to say to your parents, “Well, you told me so and I didn’t do it, you know, and so God will continue, I think, as this drags on.

But as they were talking to you about the pain, the pain, young people, that was Joshua’s constant thing he was saying over to us. Well, besides all of this other, you don’t understand. There’s such great pain I am suffering. My heart is torn out of my body. I gave it to this girl and now she’s given her body to someone else. And there’s greater me and it’s my responsibility would not let his mother what she was trying to do make the girl share that responsibility which we appreciated this great growth in this young man but he said no he kept saying to his mother and his father kept saying that’s right to his wife you know out of this is you know his responsibility and that’s what we’re talking about today and so I know this is new to a lot of you I know that you’re very flesh fights against saying recreational dating is not the way to go.

It will fight against it. There will be rebellion in our souls about this. But it’s so important to listen up and to understand there is great pain and that’s what your parents will be trying to save you from. And we did not protect our children properly. And so we’re here today still after all the repentance, you know, suffering great pain with our children as we watch the grandchildren. And like how said to the fourth generation but there is a blessing the thousands you know in Christ too.

So thank you. The world beats at the door of your houses and our flesh beats against us as well. And unless you think unless you’re stronger than Samson, wiser than Solomon or more committed to God in your heart than David, don’t think you can’t stumble. You can. So we need each other. We need our parents to oversee the relationships.

Richard, do you want to say something to begin with? No. Okay.

Why don’t we just then have you come to the mic so we can record your question this time so this session can be recorded. Any questions you have first about the qualification stuff and how to do that or anything else as well in terms of the processes that we begin to discuss here in the last couple of days about courtship questions please go to the mic. Feel free to line up if you have—wait till the other person sits down. It would facilitate it if you would go ahead and get behind the questioner so we could kind of move right ahead.

Okay. In regards to the dowry, what is the scriptural basis of even general guidelines as to how much that entails as far as amounts of money? Well, Reverend Rushdoony believes based upon the enumeration of the value of the silver at the time that it was about two times the yearly wage. But it’s very difficult to set a figure because we really don’t know a lot about the economy of when the scripture was written and the value of money relative to the way we see it today.

You know, it’s interesting. It’s to me I think that God could have given us an exact figure. It could be our immaturity that doesn’t let us see more exactly what he shows us so far in scripture about that topic. Or it could be that the point is not so much the amount as a demonstration to the parents of the maturity of the man and an ability to provide in case of you know adultery on his part, desertion on his part, or his death.

So that the figure will vary from geographic locality to geographic locality. It will vary depending on the estimation of the parents and so we get different kinds of dowries listed to keep us from idolatry of a particular dowry maybe. So anybody else have anything on that question up here? No.

Next, a couple considerations on that might be that the one thing you need to remember is your year of exclusion. You know, when you go into a marriage, you’d want maybe—I mean maybe apart from the dowry, you’d want a year of income maybe saved up to go in which could be part of the responsibility thing even though it’s maybe not the dowry that’s committed you know to the trust of the father.

The other thing is if you die or the husband dies—I don’t know if it’s just our culture or this is a biblical thing or what, but isn’t there a traditional period of mourning where you wouldn’t want to—the woman wouldn’t want to be marrying somebody else until after that period of time? So, if that’s a year, you know, you want at least a year’s income maybe set aside to provide for her and/or children and that sort of situation.

So, those are practical economic things that we would understand today that might enter into it.

Yeah. Comments for—I guess picked up and everybody heard them. Okay.

One thing I wanted to mention in terms of the year of exclusion, my understanding of the text of the year of exclusion is that it didn’t prohibit normal sorts of vocation but rather the prohibition was on the other activities of ministry in the church ministry that we would normally exercise toward other households or military service. Now it could be others have said that it is a year of exclusion from all work but my understanding is it’s sort of like in the way of applying it today—work a normal 40-hour job, but you don’t do anything in the church. You don’t do any voluntary activities in the community.

And of course, the purpose of the year of exclusion was to cheer up the wife to help her to come to rejoicing in the marriage. And it’s interesting that the scriptures say that we’re to rejoice in the wife of our youth, our covenant spouse, and she’s to be led into rejoicing by the husband. And so joy is at the core of marriage. And the year of exclusion is important to that. And in terms of the—we’re going to talk about widows in the next few weeks from the book of Timothy—young widows and old widows. John’s point is well taken.

There’s a period of time even if young widows are to remarry—ideally there’s a period of time of mourning and you don’t want to move that on too quickly and so she’d have to be more or less self-supporting particularly if there’s no extended family or if the church is not able to help as well.

Anybody else have comments on that one? Nope. Okay.

Next. Thanks. In a growing stage of our culture a generation or two ago it seems like young people matured at an earlier age. Their marriages at 13, 15, 16 years old and families and big families and I’d like to if you could the panel address the subject of ages and maturity of in our generation now what ages you think that we should be encouraging our children to be thinking about this particular issue of courtship marriage and mate choosing.

Well, you know, if you have to have a dowry for a man, you know, if Dennis says it’s two times your annual income and you’re not making anything, that’s not very much money. But, you know, but if you are, you know, if you’re making 20,000 a year and you had to have 40,000 I mean certainly that would be a restriction on the man as far as you know and I don’t—when you talk about maturity I don’t think people mature any different now than they did before. I mean certainly physically I don’t think there’s been an evolutionary process or anything. I I think though that what you’re talking more about is scripturally or culturally or at the soul myth of adolescence in that concept.

Yeah. Yeah. So, I don’t I wouldn’t know what to say about a woman. I would add to that a psychological phenomenon that I’ve noticed in myself and I bet most of you are going to understand this also. And that is when you start to get a you know a son or whatever that’s 18 or 19 or whatever and you reflect on what was going on in your mind at that age. And somehow you’re trying to put yourself in that and you think about—we’re—our perceptions in our minds are easily twisted and inaccurate.

And I guess what I’d encourage us all to do is to pray for each other because so often we think, well, there’s no way, you know, this 18-year-old kid could get married. And yet you think about how what you were going through when you were 18. If you were in love and all that and you really believe that you could and a lot of times people—I mean I see a couple back there they were pretty darn young when they got married and you know they’ve done quite well. And so what I’m trying to say is that in terms of the psychology of it this is not—this has no regard to all the qualifications and all these other things we’re saying—in terms of the psychology of us parents as we think about what our children we need to be cautious and not just assume because they’re not as mature as we are right now because you know we’re deceived in terms of what we think.

A lot of you know we don’t maybe have the faith that our children have that they can do it and you need to I guess somehow not let that overrule the objective qualifications and the faith that’s involved and we need to pray for ourselves on that. Am I making any sense on that? If I lost it?

Maybe kind of like if the culture says kids should be 25 but we’ve got kids—children, young adults that are 18 and 19 and see what qualifications are in place. We don’t want the culture to stop us from entertaining that. Is that right?

Well, I’m talking more, I think, just in terms of a parent’s natural love for their child and how they’re deceived. I mean, I guess that’s the best word in terms of what they think. I mean, we’re often think of our little, you know, I can only use this for Jacob because he’s my little Jacob, you know, but yet he’s grown. He is a man now.

And yet we think of him—yeah, I remember changing his diapers and all this sort of thing. And so it’s hard for us to sometimes psychologically recognize that they have grown up. We still think of them as my little baby. And so I’m just trying to caution us to not let that be the determining factor on how we feel that they think they’re old enough. I mean, there’s they have grown up. They’re strong and they can—

Yeah.

I think you know, men and women mature. I mean, you know, you go through puberty and that’s obviously God telling the parents and the children something is going to start happening now. So you got a window of opportunity it seems between that point when you get real serious and you know the Jewish culture had bar mitzvah and bat mitzvah—sons and daughters of the law—at a certain age there’s an intensification of responsibility and training. It’s not that they’re innocent in that till that point in time. So then you’ve got men and women who now are more physically prepared to move toward marriage and propagation, but usually there’s not a lot of interest for a few years, which means we got a real opportunity to do a lot of this qualification stuff.

So, when the interest kicks in and you know, the juices start flowing, so to speak, scream out at you, we’ve done a lot of work already relative to the qualifications with them. If we’re ahead of the curve, and I’m with Richard, you got to just sort of—the scriptures don’t prohibit young marriages, then we don’t want to let our own self-deception prohibit them either. On the other hand, you’ve got a perversity in our culture when young children are becoming pregnant at 10, 12, 13 years of age and little boys are engaging in sexual activity.

I think that is abnormal and perverse and as a result of the culture pushing sexuality at younger and younger ages. And we know people in our own church that pagan men have pushed children toward romantic interest before they were really engaged in that kind of thinking with devastating results. So, you know, there’s problems at both ends of the spectrum.

Had a comment on that.

I guess it part of it you have to define for men anyways when a boy becomes a man because the scriptures teach in 1 Corinthians 7, “But because of immoralities, let each man have his own wife and let each woman have her own husband and let the husband fulfill his duty to his wife,” etc., and also in 1 Corinthians 7, “But if they do not have self-control, let them marry, for it is better to marry than to burn.”

So, that seems to be kind of the determination—it seems like, is when does a boy become a man? And I think, wasn’t that, as I understand it, the bar mitzvah—the son of the law—was somewhat of an entrance into that, wasn’t it?

Yeah. Although it was only a 12. I know. Yeah. Well, I don’t know. You’d have to make a poll out here. But it’s it’s that—

Yeah. That’s right. If you had arranged marriage.

Yeah. Dave as fathers and a mother up here also. So, what kinds of things would you encourage your children or want your children to talk about in the pre-courtship or courtship stage as far as issues? You touched on that some last night, I think, Dennis, but as far as, you know, child rearing and things like that or whatever else.

Would you repeat the question? What would—what would you everything. I don’t know if I still understand the question, Mike, but—

Oh, I want to make sure that I know ‘cuz I could say some things, but I don’t. I was just thinking terms of I know that when you first start getting to know somebody, you feel like maybe you’re crying or asking things that are a little further down the road that you shouldn’t be worried about yet. I mean, I’m just met this person. What kinds of things should I talk about? Is it inappropriate to be saying, you know, what’s your idea of marriage or what do you think about child rearing or what’s your philosophies of education? And those—what kinds of things would be appropriate at different stages to press into and engage in conversation so you’re not just staying at you know, the movie, just real simple list of kind of things and getting your heart strings attached without really looking at some deeper issues and yet not looking at things that maybe are inappropriate to talk about when you just meet somebody.

You see that?

Yeah. I would be hopeful. I’m a father. Now are parents of girls. It’s my hope that what will happen for us is if a young man is interested in our daughters that before any of that discussion happens between the two of them that they would—that the young man would first tell his father that he might be interested in say Katie or Hannah—that’s way downstream or hie—that’s close. The young man would go to his father and express his interests ask him those questions and hopefully the father has prepared his son and then at that time if a young man is interested in my daughters I would hope that he wouldn’t go to my daughter. I would hope he would go to me first so that I could provide some kind of protection. He’s been instructed.

Oh, I said “How my daughters have been instructed that if a young man shows some interest in her if they want to spend more time with them or if they want to take them somewhere to say something like, “Well, that sounds like an interesting idea.” Or be very nice to them, but say, “It would be great if you would talk to my father first and have all that discussion taken care of at that level regarding two young people talking about marriage.” I remember Nancy and I when we were young—young, we were talking about things about marriage and children, all that kind of stuff.

I don’t know how profitable that is at a young age. I’m not going to put an age on that. But I just think those things should be handled later. There, although there probably has already been some discussion about things like that. I know sometimes that when a bunch of kids get together, they just ask questions in a group setting sometime about some of stuff like that. I don’t see anything wrong with that, but if it’s my daughter and a and a young man, I think it’d be better if that young man went through some protocol there.

And I had a comment on that.

And Doug Wilson talks about this on his tapes and courtships, and I know it firsthand, and this is a caution to you young ladies out there. What guys like to do, and especially guys in Bible school, is to show or I can see it in the church, how spiritual they are, and they’ll begin an acquaintance with a young lady, and pretty soon they want to elevate it to the spiritual level and they’ll want to start having Bible studies together and they’ll want to start praying together and pretty soon you’ve taken it to a different level and then there can be that bond at a different level where maybe it’s not supposed to be there.

You know, maybe at that point, you know, you’re already courting and it’s just a caution that and I can’t describe exactly what happens, but it’s a it’s kind of a trick I’ve seen guys use in Bible school to catch women is to—because women generally are more tender been my experience, you know, to the things of the Lord and spiritual. And a guy can come in and kind of captivate you by saying, “Well, you know, why don’t we just go down to the beach, you know, and maybe we can walk and pray together and you develop this bond.” And if you want more on that type of thinking, Doug Wilson tapes on courtship. He talks about how guys do that.

Yeah. Mike could be. I don’t know. Howard, I think in conversations with me, the expression he expression he used about men and women at Bible college was it was like shooting fish in a barrel. Pretty easy pickings, you know, for the wily coyote out there. So, you want to know that I hope I’m not offending people, but you know, it is really true what he’s saying. A lot of those conversations, of course, as Dave said, probably can and should happen in the context of the culture of the younger children of the church as they’re growing up.

I mean hopefully uh the teens get together occasionally here at camp and discussions whatever help hopefully some of those discussions relate to some of those issues. I’m sure they probably the last couple of days have related to the issues of which we speak.

I wanted to mention too in terms reinforcing what Dave said particularly when there’s a relationship beginning to develop if but to try to get the I would recommend highly getting the boy involved to ask and request things that he wants to do with the daughter. Even if you’ve given approval to a developing relationship, that stuff goes through the parents. Otherwise, the parent is in an untenable position. If the guy talks to the girl, maybe we could, you know, go to the movie this afternoon. Why don’t you ask your parents? Or even if she says, “Why don’t you ask my parents?” Somebody’s asking, but still now you’re in the position of telling the daughter no to something that she didn’t even have to know was a being asked if you tell the boy no.

You see what I’m saying? So to try to funnel decision making and opportunities through the father so that he’s not always telling no to two people and setting up a situation where you developed the pattern of them deciding things and the dad just putting on the brakes. ‘Cuz the point is the father is not just supposed to be guarding, he’s supposed to be nurturing relationship.

I feel that, it’s very dangerous for a young lady, as Howard has expressed, to be praying and reading the Bible with a young man before marriage because that is her father’s responsibility and oversight to teach her from the word of God. The Bible can be used to say anything that you wanted to say if you begin to twist it. And out of the wickedness of our hearts, we can do that to come to an end that a young man might desire. Wherein I think it’s very proper for the father of that daughter and this young man to be sharing the word of God. And when he walks down that aisle and the father turns that responsibility then over to this young man, he knows that young man is now ready for it.

But before that time, that would be in my estimation just a very strong no.

Okay. Now again, unity and diversity, right? You’re hearing different things from different people because there’s different approaches and we’ve got different children. I would probably want to encourage the kids to have discussions relative to the scriptures and even pray together but not in an instructional way. This is where maybe the exercise of headship is out but what they are doing is they’re encouraging each other in the faith as equals.

You know we look at the catechism again we talked about equals, superiors, inferiors and you know I think what very properly is warning against is developing a superior and fair relationship with the man and the woman who are moving toward marriage. But in terms of equals, we want all of our kids encouraging each other in the faith and reading the scriptures together and praying with each other. So I, you know, kids don’t I imagine some of you are starting to say, “What can we do? We can’t have fun together. We can’t read the Bible together.” Not what we’re saying.

Yeah. I think you talked about yesterday, Dennis, that where people get in trouble is when they’re off by themselves. And it doesn’t matter how holy of a thing you’re doing at the time. I mean, and it’s real important for young people when they’re at that stage in working up the ladder there to be in a group setting or be in around other folks or around your parents. And that’s just a caution. So the holy kiss has to occur in the context of the congregation.

I would just want to emphasize and again I’m new to this but the importance of what Davis said in terms of conscience sake for the young man and the young woman for the young man to go to her father over and over and over again to develop a relationship in which the two are in agreement on what’s going on just for his—the young guy’s conscience sake because of all these “if that” or “if that” and you know this might be right this might not be right and I think if the young man has built a relationship with the with the gal’s father and that they are working together in the sense of he is being submissive to her father and in terms of what he’s trying to do you know whether it’s take her this or do that or whatever I think it would be a you know it’s a great thing just for his conscience sake to give him guidance that way.

I’d like to go back and address the maturity and age qualification thing. As you guys were discussing these things, it brought a couple things to mind. And one is the story we read about J.C. Penney. When he was young, his father had a sense of you know, really letting go and passing on more responsibility to his kids. And when his son was nine, he said, “From now on, you have to get your own clothes somehow. You know, you figure out how to earn the money, and I’ll help you to a certain degree, but I’m not going to I’m not going to you know feed you with ideas or anything and that really took hold and of course he became quite an entrepreneur in his life.

And later you know he had to repent of really going overboard I think on business. It almost kind of worked the wrong way but that the reminder that you know there’s areas especially in the economic areas where we need to be letting go earlier so that they increasingly get to feel the responsibility that they’re they’re going to have so that we can we can shorten the gap between in our culture when a man feels, you know, responsible and is able to take the responsibility of the budget—right now it’s a long time after his body is able, you know, to procreate.

I think, you know, I mean, if you wait too long to have kids, you start to get tired before you get them all out of diapers and stuff. So, it’d be a good idea to get an earlier start. You know, we’ve watched other couples in the congregation that had more sense than I did in getting started with their families and they get to enjoy you know each other a lot quicker after the kids are you know on and stuff like that.

Anyway, that was one idea. The other idea is the—that was the economic thing—you know let’s let’s let’s encourage our kids take more responsibility earlier that way. The other is the social thing. When I was growing up I remember you know from the peer group public high school to the peer group church youth group to the peer group Bible school I was I was very alive to the fact that a peer group environment was fun and rewarding and exciting and there was very little responsibility and so it was all very attractive and so that was that was my kind of vocational idea in the future is kind of perpetuate that as best I could.

If you if you had let’s say your sons and daughters their experiences of life and especially their good experience of life were in the context of church and family, by the way, these peer group things were not so much in the relation back up. Okay. If your children growing up have their positive experience in the in the in the relationships of families, they’re going to have before them the benefits.

I mean, they’re going to see that families are good, marriages are good. I can’t remember any marriages around me when I was going through all these peer group experiences that stood out as being, hey, this is a neat thing. This would be something to work for you. This would be something to sacrifice to have because it’s really good. It was just all the peer group stuff was good.

If you have the children growing up and seeing families as they as they mature and gain their understanding of life, they would be more disposed saying, “Hey, it’d be worth it to work at having a good marriage. It’d be worth it to start a family.” When I was growing up, I didn’t believe that. I in fact, inexplicably to us at the time, marriage was a bad thing. You know, I mean, you had to when you when you taught that subject out of the scriptures, you had to kind of work against the tide of the of the Christian young people that I was working, you know, with and living with, you had to kind of work against the tide to screw up your, you know, emotions.

Okay, well, well, Paul says, you know, in chapter 7, it’s not a good thing. And, you know, that’s kind of what we believe, but that must not be true, you know, ‘cuz, you know, it’s the only way people get into this world. And so, we had to kind of fight against it had a bad reputation with us. And I think part of that came from just the peer group experience and not having good positive advertisements for it in real life.

There’s just a couple things I’d like to comment on. First of all, you guys, you kids out here, don’t be afraid to get up and ask questions because we are you know, we might be looking at these things as parents, but we don’t want to do this with the exclusion of you guys not getting your questions answered also.

First comment. Second thing would be as a father you know I look at this dowry thing that we have talked about and you know over the course of the of the years since the age of 10 with my kids and when they start working I make them put stuff away for their future. Now I’m know that, you know, looking at Eli, I know he’s worked, you know, ever since he was, you know, 13, 14, whatever. That he has a certain amount of money put aside. And now, as a father, for you boys who want to come after my daughter, I’m going to be looking at, have they been faithful to be putting things aside from a for a long time, you know, ever since they begin working and not just “Okay. Well, let’s see. In the next couple years, I want to be getting married, so I’m going to start putting stuff away now.” Excuse me. Now, so you know, I want to encourage us all to look at a long-term thing there.

There’s I had a whole bunch of things I wanted, but I’m forgetting them as I go along. Anyway, as I think of them, I’ll come back up along that line about starting now with your boys.

Just to let you know, I have some silver I’ll sell you. Just a little hard currency note here. And you know, I don’t worry. I say that because I know two young men, I won’t mention names, who’ve I’ve sold silver to because they’re preparing for these kinds of things from me. They’re not preparing anything else except just getting silver from me. I want I want to establish that right here now.

The concerning the dowry, I think it’s very important. Now, if you are if you are a man who has a business, I don’t worry about the dowry. I can train these kids to check, you know, I can I can help them in their vocation and I can take it out of their check.

On a somewhat different topic, getting back to what Connie and Mike were talking about, it seems like my thought went to premarital counseling done by the elders and in other churches by the pastors. I’m sure that the intended purpose of premarital counseling is to make sure that certain things have been thought through and talked about, but I know that from a practical standpoint, often times that’s the first time those things have ever been considered.

Is that not true, Dennis? That happens?

Yeah, it depends. I’ve gone through several preparations for marriages with people with premarital counseling. And I wrote that down when Mike asked this question to mention that I can give you books that I use. And there’s a lot of bad ones or not particularly useful ones. There’s some really useful ones as well that you could use with your own children in many ways to get them ready for a lot of that.

I will still go over all that stuff. If somebody wants me to marry him, I’ve got a responsibility before God to cover the bases to make sure. So, I’m not turning that completely over to the parents in terms of the abdication of my responsibility. But if you’ve done your job correctly, then my job is a lot easier, lot fewer sessions. And I’ve had experiences both ways where people come in with zero in a lot of these areas and other people come in—Connie and Mike is the example where almost everything is like, you know, done already. So, yeah, there’s a great variety.

Yeah, that was my question is whether those materials could be available to us as fathers and mothers to have covered that with our kids at a real early age so that those kinds of things are well established. I appreciate that. I’ll ask Janice to I’ll give her a couple of titles to see if she’ll keep them in stock for us.

Yeah, I’ll just say one way to look at it is I believe it is primarily first of all the parents and the children’s responsibility. They should have those ducks in a row and then when they go to the elders, the elders in a sense are giving a second witness to something that should already have been done.

I’d like to address Mr. Hoover’s response here. Does your response mean that we as fathers who are trying to follow the idea of the dowry that we can either trash it at will or uh are we supposed to abide by the idea of the dowry?

No, I I’m certainly not suggesting you trash the idea of a dowry. I’m just I was just simply saying that as a somebody who has his own business, I could assist that if a situation developed in our family where a young and came and maybe he was maybe he met every qualification but he was having a difficulty with the dowry, that’s a situation where I know that I could help because I could provide employment. I could provide like an apprenticeship if you will to train him to become a drywall applicator to you know to fatten his coffers. You know that’s all I simply was saying. Please don’t get the idea that I was trying to demean the idea of the of the dowry.

You know, with our girls, we have from the earliest ages with them encourage them and train them to put money away for their dowry. Why? They’re not supposed to have a dowry that they provide to the marriage because I want them married and I don’t think I’m going to find all that many men who have been trained correctly and from the scriptures to have a dowry.

So my choice is I can either wait for endowed men to come along and maybe not have my daughters get married or I can try to provide some degree of protection that they lack in terms of protection from my side of the equation. I mean it’s like it’s like if your son is going to date an Armenian girl. Well, that’s not the best of all circumstances, right? I mean we want to for our children to find the full-blown theonomic postmillennial Calvinists to marry, but we’re not going to find them in great numbers.

So what you look for is for instance an Armenian girl who is not self-consciously Armenian. She’s been raised in a Baptist church and learned it by osmosis. So that when you start to teach her as the relationship develops and as she starts to get guided toward the doctrinal distinctives we believe in, we believe it’s the truth and that mature Christians will move that way. And so Dave, we believe these men are mature as they mature as Christians, full-blown Christians, they’ll see the diary necessity.

We can train them in that and move them toward that during the relationship. But, you know, maybe by the end of the time, and we think it’s proper and important for them to marry, they don’t have $20,000. So, the daughter or the parents can maybe bring some to that to provide protection for their daughter in case this guy gets killed, you know, in a accident the first year, for instance. So, you know, it’s I’ve been thinking about this as we’re talking here that, you know, perfectionism is something we cannot allow ourselves to slip into.

We don’t want to be slothful and don’t do the right thing, all that stuff. But let’s face it, this is a new topic for the Christian church in the last hundred years for the most part. Praise God that the homeschooling community and pastors like Mr. Jelly and others are doing work in this area, Jaye, but Mr. Jaye are doing work in this area but you know we’re in a transition phase here and some of the kids if we wait for the transition to be complete will be past the age.

I would just ask a question not that I have the answer to it but it seems to me in terms of this dowry thing as young men are starting to save it seems like one of the poorest ways to save would be just to put that money in a bank and let it try to accrue interest in light of our inflationary age that we have. So I would just pose the question. I don’t know the answer for people to be thinking about creative and productive and fruitful ways for how this dowry could look other than just a savings account—period, you know, in terms of maybe the investment of some sort or starting their own business or whatever. I would I’m just posing the question to think about because I don’t think just putting in the in the bank is the wisest or the best way and I don’t know the answer but I’m just asking.

As a father of daughters you know Nancy and I felt that we have a goal and it’s been our job to prepare our girls to leave and to cleave to a young man one day. I’m more concerned and more interested in somebody long-term who is a I’m going to use the word finisher or a completer. We’re going to be able to do work with our daughters and prepare them for marriage. I believe that we’ll have quarter million dollar girls and I’m going to get maybe $5,000 in dowry. I really believe that. That’s how we’re preparing our girls.

But we’re looking for men who will love, you know, go in be insanely in love with our daughters so that I would be convinced that this man will be able to finish the job that we’ve started. Does that make sense? In time that man, I’m speaking, you know, just personally here because I have daughters and we’d like to have men being prepared right now. Our biggest concern and our biggest hope and desire is that the men of this church who have young sons will have been doing just those things—that they would have been just as earnest in training their men as we have with our girls.

So that would be a magical thing in a sense, you know, the match would be perfect this side of glory when that thing happens. And so we’re it gets back to this early start, I guess. Don’t wait till your children are 13, 14, and 15. I mean, get them, you know, when they’re small, young, talk to them about these kinds of things and gain their trust, I guess, is what I’m saying. And develop them that way.

And that’s we’re looking for completers who has the potential to complete the job that Nancy and I have done with our girls.

And I don’t know if that’s helpful, but that’s some of the things I’ve been thinking about lately regarding these things.

You know, scriptures teach that if a man does not provide for his own, he’s worse than an infidel. And I think that’s why the dowry keeps coming up here is because that’s what the man is supposed to do. I mean, he’s supposed to provide for his own. Now, if you got a guy who hasn’t provided even for himself, now all of a sudden wants to get married to your daughter, I mean, you know, you’re going to struggle with that. So, you want to see that characteristic of being able to provide not only for himself, but in service and in charity to others. And then, as he does that, it should be fairly easy, I think, to to have that dowry and as you were saying, Richard, to be able to invest it wisely so maybe we could get a greater return, you know, maybe we can get 20% instead of 3% and that makes your dowry get there all that much more quicker and that quicker you can get married.

So, you know, those things are all important and I really agree with what Dave is saying too that you have to look at the potential in in people as well. You know, if a person, let’s say, wants to go into a medical profession and the only way they can get their union card is to go through college in seven years of college. I’ll tell you what, they’re not going to have a lot of money at the end of seven years.

Chris W. probably knows that. And so what hap—what do you have? Well, you don’t have a lot of money, but you got a lot of potential. And see, you’ve capitalized yourself. And I think that’s what we’re talking about here is capital, whether it’s capitalized in skills and talents or capitalizing in real money.

Yeah. Again, David with the physical evidence that he could conquer God’s enemies was an appropriate dowry to a king for a king’s daughter. Now, I know Saul was wicked in many ways, but it’s still an example to us of what the dowry is trying to accomplish. A guy who’s gone through seven years of school shown that kind of self-discipline control and then enabled himself to now go out and earn money rather rapidly. That’s a good demonstration.

I had a couple of thoughts too, just generally since nobody’s at the microphone yet. Quickly, couple of things.

One, remember that quote that I know some of you don’t like it when I said it, but I’m going to say it again anyway in terms of homeschooling. Everything’s worth doing, it’s worth doing badly. We don’t want to lose the striving for excellence. But you know, in your homeschools, you get discouraged and want to quit because you’re doing such a crummy job. I know some of you do, and I know I have over the years at times, too.

But don’t quit. If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing. That’s the point of the phrase. And it’s worth doing to oversee this process. Even if your kid doesn’t have $20,000 by the time they’re 20 years old and you feel like you’ve lacked in a lot of ways, get help from people, but don’t stop doing it. Put your hand to the task.

Second thing, homeschooling. We used to say we came out of the private public schools ourselves and we’re okay. And then we realize we weren’t okay. That we didn’t have a biblical worldview. And some of us are saying, “Well, we didn’t do all this. We got married and we’re okay.” Well, God may be gracious, but the older you get, the older I realize I wasn’t okay and I’m still not okay. And I would have been much better to pay much closer attention to this stuff in preparation for marriage.

Is there a question?

Oh, one other thing. Children, I see the guy who’s commenting. One more thing. Bob Evans encouraged you to ask questions. Kids, if you want to write down those questions, be anonymous. Write them down. Hand them in later on and we’ll try to address them in the next 24 hours that we have left here.

Tom, I was I was wondering about with the dowry. We all know pretty much in this church what the dowry is. But there’s a good chance that some of our kids aren’t going to be carrying kids in this church that have no idea and their parents aren’t in with the dowry thing. So, I don’t know how we’re going to handle that when we have a boy come that’s interested in our daughter or you know doesn’t know about that. Sometimes it’s hard to change things later on. And then my second question would be like a life insurance policy. I know kind of does good when you’re a lot—when you’re when you die, but if you turn into a flake, where does that leave or—

So, if you guys think of a life insurance policy is a good type of dowry or not.

I like what Dennis said about the life insurance policy to take care of the death problem. The he also mentioned on the board the other night about the infidelity problem if there if that happened. And that’s a real big concern. But for me, the life insurance policy has something to bear there ‘cuz I’d probably kill the young man. And I am just kidding. Big eyes for driving a truck. I guess I stomach. That’s a hard act to follow. I was kidding. I was kidding.

One thing that I just had one comment question and the and the comment was that you know I can relate to what you said about we put so much into our children and we’ve we’ve invested time and money and blood, sweat, and tears and all of that and so we really feel like, you know, we have we expect when a prospective suitor comes along that we’re we have a real prize and I think that’s right and I think that’s the beauty about homeschooling and parental oversight.

But I just want to encourage everybody if you’re thinking about Christian schools. The one thing that you need to know about that is you lose a lot of oversight and a lot of control. Now Christian schools, they can be good. There are good things that come out of them. But the one thing you do is you do give away that authority to somebody else, four or five teachers and a peer group. And once you’ve done that, you’ve you’ve lost a lot and you have to really maintain control and a relationship, personal relationship.

And that leads me to my next question to Howard. I may be wrong about this, but my daughter once came to me and asked me about promise rings. Some of the girls were doing this thing, promise rings, they dad would buy a ring. They would put the a ring on their finger and until they met a potential suitor or whatever. Did you do that? Did you mistaken on that? Tell me a little bit about that because what I did was my daughter talked to me about that and I said, “Yeah, that’s a good idea.” And then, “Well, that’s $75.” And then and two days later she said, I need a SAT CD ROM because I got to take this SAT test.

I went out and bought that. All of a sudden, she went and bought her own promise ring and I thought, well, it so it all kind of backfired and really became kind of meaningless. Can you shed a little light on that, please?

11:30. 11:30. Let’s go to 11:30. I want to answer Tom’s question first in a little bit more detail. The dowry relationship to the Lord weird loaf. Guard, nurture, guard. The dowry provides nurturing for the wife by sh de demonstrating the maturity of the husband, his sacrificial love. He’s given her a ton of what his labor was and an investment in her to invest. Allah Proverbs 31. So here’s some stuff it produces on the nurture side. Here’s some things it does on the guarding side. Guarding relative to death or improper divorce in the part of the husband. So we’re in a situation where we don’t have all of this developed. We got young guys coming seeking our daughter’s hand. We can help provide these elements guarding relative to death and divorce.

Now, properly that’s his job, but you know, we can help in that job by having our daughters endowed on our own. They can buy a term life insurance policy here. We can do prenuptial agreements here. But over here, this can be demonstrated. So, if we got some of this money stuff taken care of, we can look for demonstrations of maturity like the foreskins of David that offered up to Saul and sacrificial love. He went out and exposed himself to death to attain that daughter’s hand and investment.

You know, again, we can help relative to the nurturing side of the money relationship by getting her to have some money. We help with money and this guy over time perhaps if they get married can develop can put into the budget money for her to invest in terms of the beautification of the home or her business. What I’m saying is there’s lots of components and I think we have to be creative in the situation in which we find ourselves to bring all these components together.

So you buy a life insurance policy, you’re not done because you haven’t taken care of these aspects. First life insurance company began in this country as a result of trying to endow Presbyterian missionaries who they knew should go out with wives but were young and couldn’t get married yet. So we have life insurance to cover part of it but it’s just a part.

Okay. So those are the aspects chunk together what your plan is as a perspective guy comes. And now Howard, can you tell us some about the promise ring?

Forgot what the question. No. It doesn’t have to be a $75 ring. It’s very symbolic and you can get one out of a you know a cereal box. But they are they are a useful tool and we used it with our youngest daughter and said to her we wanted a commitment from her that she would not go out and go to that point with a person without consulting with me first and I and her mother both and it turned out very useful because she was really committed to that and she felt very strongly about it.

So what did you have her actually covenant to do? I don’t remember exactly what it was now. Maybe he I remember he took her out on a date. He asked her to not consider anyone for me unless he first was guarding over that and would give his consent to that and then they would have a ceremony to remove that ring when this young when this young man came in and Howard gave his permission and they did have that ceremony. It was very moving and we still think with Greg we’re praying for what’s going on in his life right now but God has given us the peace underneath that this was the right young man for our daughter and that God will in his timing work all the other things as we go along in life.

We are sinful people and we’re not perfect. But this bonded Wendy and her dad tightly together. He knew that she knew that he considered her very precious. There was something on her hand daily to remind her that her dad considered her a—

And if nothing else, it did that, you know, for their relationship. They still have that relationship.

Thank you.

I always realize there is a difference between theoretical perfection and what actually happens, what’s what’s possible for this generation as we’re moving forward. But the church is going to move in a direction and the model that Dennis brought up earlier a couple days ago about fathers giving away their daughters and so forth and these things about men being prepared in life will lead to a discussion of age differences.

And I realize that this generation and this church is probably going to likely pair up similar ages. But what is the church going to be heading towards in the future? And what are some biblical guidelines in that area? And I don’t expect an maybe an answer today, but this something for the future thought and where are we headed in that respect? When are women ready and men ready in a sense?

Well, tell you the truth, I haven’t really done the chronological studies, but you could take a look at the chronological records in the scriptures and sort of see what their cultural typical norms of when people married were. So that might be useful consideration of looking long-term what the best model might be or at least what a historical model in terms of the uh recorded records of the church are in the Old Testament.

On so first of all from the a biblical model I do not know any specific information telling us it’s good or bad to have big or not big differences of age between the mates. But I think probably we can look at the records we’d see stuff there. You can find individual examples, but of course we never want to work on the basis of those. We want to look for the norms that the scriptures give unless the example is founded.

For instance, that’s what I tried to do with the patriarchal model was to say, well, we’ve got this, but that’s not good enough. And what we have is that it flows out of the teaching in Genesis, the model of the first marriage. It’s reinforced by case law, and then it’s reinforced by the epistles. Unless you have those kind of reinforces of historical example, example, you do not want to bind people’s conscience on the basis of the examples.

Having said that, there is a lot of material that probably would be very useful for evaluation of what you’re talking about. On the other side of the issue, more in a more anecdotal way, we were at a church a month ago, my wife and I, OCRC church where the Casbins go to church up in Sunnyside, Washington. And there you actually have an example, a modern-day example of a pastor whose wife is probably, I don’t know, 15, 20 years younger than he is and we talked to them very frankly about that and ask about you know strengths and weaknesses of what they saw and if people are considering if you find yourself in a situation where there is this wide disparity of age I think it would be really wise for people in those situations to think through the implications of that into the marriage—it isn’t a not for the purpose of saying yes or no but for the purpose of saying that if we go into this these are some built-in problems these are some built advantages.

In her case, for instance, the father tires quite easily compared to the children. The other day I, you know, tried to spend some time with my son and he’s interested in basketball. So, dad, come play three on three basketball with me. Okay. And I feel like I’m going to look like an idiot out there, but that’s okay ‘cuz I love my son. And if I look like an idiot or die of a heart attack. But see, if Charity was a boy, in 10, 15 years, no matter what my desire might be, it just may not be possible unless we can work in a wheelchair to leave on the—You see what I’m saying?

There’s things you have to think about. It doesn’t mean that it’s wrong or good. It just means these are things going in. If my if my daughter was to marry someone who was a quadriplegic, you know, exaggeration for effect, I’d have to help them think through the issues on that. Not to say whether we do or don’t maybe, but to think through what they have to do in light of the difficulties there.

Anyone else want to discuss that?

Couple of hypotheticals that may come up in the future that I’m not sure if you can answer now. One is with the courtship and Richard was talking tonight about how you know other homeschools are talking about that and the more they talk about it the more it’s going to filter into the churches and the churches are going to have to confront the courtship issue and I think that’s exciting but until that happens sufficiently how do we propose to deal with sons or daughters who are interested in somebody from another church they’ve never heard of it or thought—consider it and what are we going to do with those parents you know how are we going to bridge that gap expectations and how to proceed? That’s one question. The other question is what happens if a young man is interested in a Christian young lady who is not from a Christian home.

And so the whole problem becomes even worse. And then the son goes to the father