Dr. Joe Rigney: This Lie Has Undermined the Church

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But I think that you've got you've kind of put your finger on the pulse of something that's been underlining that's really kind of undone things within the church and within the culture. So if you can just kind of explain the book that's, you know, with empathy, what is it? It's the sin of empathy where compassion goes wrong. It's compassionate counterfeits. Yes. Okay. Yeah. Good. So yeah. What's that? What's that about? Yeah. Yeah. And maybe maybe just what kind of what's it about and then what drove you into this area? Why'd you get interested? Okay. Yeah. Good. So what drove me was about 15 years ago now. I read a book called The Failure of Nerve by Edwin Friedman, who was a Jewish rabbi and family counselor. And it was a book on leadership in the age of the quick fix and the kind of pathologies of modern society. And I read it and it was very insightful. I felt like it was putting his finger on a lot of dynamics in institutions, whether, you know, families, up to nations, like everything in between. And one of the things he identified, he called it the fallacy of empathy. And by which he meant that in in these highly reactive environments, agitated and angsty, empathy becomes a power tool in the hands of the sensitive. And as a means by which the most reactive and immature members of a community basically hold it hostage. They hijacked the agenda because and they do so with kind of the approval or assistance of the entire community. So if you try to, if someone is the most reactive and mature and someone says, Hey, you can't talk that way here. It's not that person, but it's everybody else who will say, whoa, whoa, whoa, to the person drawing the line and being clear. To try to get them to just like, Hey, don't, don't set them off. You know, have, you know, that, that was pretty cruel. That was pretty heartless, right? Don't you know where they came from? And so he was talking about that kind of dynamic. And I thought, man, I've seen that sort of thing. That's, that's helpful. And then over the next like five to seven years, it was like American culture just collaborated to prove his point. And it was increasingly seeing it in the church as, as you're moving through and the conversations about what we now call wokeness at the time was just conversations about race and America or conversations about gender or conversations about views, these sort of things. They were kind of being put on the radar. It was like, okay, these are, they're issues that we have to address fine. But as you would get into the conversations, you'd realize there was this unspoken like thing in the room where you're not allowed to say certain things. You're not allowed to push back on certain things. You're not allowed to raise certain questions. Because if you did, you would be said, Hey, that's, that's, you're being uncaring. You're not being kind. You're not being compassionate because you would be pushing back. And so that's what kind of, and I, and so I had a Friedman category in my head and then saw it more and more and more. And so by the time, you know, 20, probably 2018 rolled around, I was the first guest on man rampant with Doug Wilson and said, we should talk about the Senate empathy. And meaning it to be somewhat provocative, like, oh, that'll turn some heads. But not realizing that it would absolutely cause people to lose their minds like that they would just, they couldn't, you know, all the nuance in the world was not going to help them. So to get there. So that was where it came from. And then from there, as people reacted very strongly to it, I just kind of over time would answer different critics, clarify certain points. People would say, you're, we're confused because you're saying this. So with Confusions, a problem, then I will bring some clarity. And so wrote a bunch about it over between 2018 and 2022, 23, something like that, wrote a bunch of different articles. And then finally was like, you know, this is actually a big enough package. Let's try to reworks and reassemble some things and put it together into into a little book with the goal of identifying this, what I would call a universal human dynamic. So this is old as a dirt. But that it was institutionalized and highly weaponized in the last 20 years or more in Western culture. And by which empathy becomes a tool of of emotional manipulation and becomes untethered from what's true and what's good. So when I say this end of empathy, the main target is not all forms of compassion or kindness, of course, but is this empathy untethered from what is true and what is good that puts other people's feelings and emotions in the driver's seat and therefore loses touch with reality. So can you just kind of play out what's the difference between sympathy? I think is, you know, so it starts good and then it becomes tyrannical. So what what does sympathy look like when it's healthy and then when it starts to get derailed, what what comes in and pollutes it? Yeah, good. So the, you know, the running analogy that I've used and I don't remember where I if I just thought of this one time or I don't remember where it came from, but it's been the go to is there's so much drowning in quicksand. Sympathy wants to help them. And so it reaches in. So it identifies what they're suffering in their pain and joins them in that. But remains anchored to the side. Like you grab them by the arm and then you grab the branch and that that's what gives you leverage to actually help them. So that's sympathy. That's compassion. It's someone's in distress. I feel, you know, an impulse to help them and then I take wise action in order to to pursue their good. Empathy, I think in the modern sense in that is jumping with both the right. So now you've lost touch with reality. You've lost touch with the shore and you're untethered and therefore you're sinking too. And so that's that's the basic difference between the two is that idea of anchoring or tethering, which we do, I think, with all sorts of other emotions. And that people I think reg, you know, recognize fairly readily. So if you said if I said this, if I wrote a book on the sin of anger, nobody would care. Nobody would be, you know, oh yeah, we know that. And they would know that there's righteous anger and there's unrighteous anger. There's anger that's out of control. There's anger that's under control. And the under control kind is good, right. Has its place. And the out of control kind isn't. And the same thing would be true of things like grief. You know, the Bible talks about there's a godly grief that leads to repentance and life. And then there's a worldly grief, which leads to death. Those two different kinds of grief. There's two different kinds of fear, right? Holy fear and unholy fear. Don't fear what they fear. And so with these other passions and emotions, we recognize good and bad versions. But all of a sudden, when it comes to what do you want to call it? Pity, sympathy, empathy, whatever word, there's no bad version of this. It's only an unadulterated good. And if I'm the devil, where am I going to hide things in the place that no one's ever going to look? And so I think that that's been a particular strategy. And I think it was deliberate even more, you know, empathy is a relatively recent term. Like it's only like 100 years old. So sympathy is a much older term. Sympathidzo is the Greek word that's in the Bible. And then you've got long Christian reflection on pity and sympathy and compassion. But all of a sudden, you know, in the last 50, 60 years, people said, you know what? Sympathy is not good enough. We need to upgrade to empathy. This is this new, better word, more comprehensive. And it was treated as a cure all. Like this is what ails the modern world, we need more empathy, more empathy, more empathy. And what was the advantage? Well, at the pop level, you would hear people talk about, well, sympathy maintains a certain kind of emotional distance, right? Whereas somebody's hurting, but you're trying to evaluate what's wise and good to help them. And this was the problem that empathy was going to overcome. You know, you get all the way in. You stay out of judgment. You don't, you don't try to do that. And that was the popular level notion. They kind of worked its way into our churches and our schools and American society. And that I think by this point, if you can't see the destruction, I don't know that I can help you. Give me more right. If you can't see how, what this has led to, the kind of compromises and the kinds of harm that has come from embracing this untested empathy, then there's no helping you to see it. Yeah. And I definitely want to dive into how it's affected the church and the church's voice and the certainly culture. Maybe let's do like an example, pick your topic and show how sympathy would engage with a struggle in how empathy, you know, as we're defining it here, how that can go awry. Yeah, good. So, so Lewis. Yes, Lewis is one of the big influences on the book actually. He talked about the same dynamic under the phrase, the passion of pity. So pity was the word in his day. Chesterton did a similar thing, talked about pity when it becomes untruthful. But Lewis, you know, basically in the great divorce describes, you know, displays an attempted pity party. Someone who says that, you know, I'm suffering and you don't care and anybody who's ever been on the receiving end of a pity party knows that what how does it work? Well, it assumes you care for me. And therefore, I'm going to wield that care and that affection and that love to my advantage to get you to do things that you don't want to do or that you wouldn't normally do, but you'll do them if I can play on your heartstrings enough. And so that's a good example. I mean, some so just imagine the last family reunion that you were a part of. And when someone put on a long face in order to get their way, okay, that's a good example. And get their way there could be relatively minor, but the point is it was the, it was the steering wheel that they grabbed you by was, I know you care for me and I will exploit that. I mean, you know, really silly example. If you ever seen the movie White Christmas. No, I haven't. Okay, so White Christmas is a classic classic Christmas Christmas with Bing Crosby and Danny K. And at one point, Bing Crosby or Danny K had saved Bing Crosby's life in the World War II and like pushed him out of the way of a falling building, but like injured his arm. And for the rest of the movie, anytime he wants to get something from Bing Crosby, he just grabs his arm and holds it like this. And all of a sudden, he'll give in, right? So there's a little more sense of obligation, but the idea is like, I'm hurt, do what I want. Yeah, right? I'm hurt. Therefore, do what I want. And that logic kind of, you know, became even stronger as you move into some of the church discussions where I'm hurt, therefore you wronged me. I'm angry. I'm sad. Therefore, you sinned, became this kind of unadulterated logic. You couldn't resist it. When you went, oh, wait, did I actually, or is what you're saying true? Can we actually have a, is it guilty until proven innocent? What's the standard for judgment? But that empathetic logic of I'm hurt. Therefore, you sinned. Therefore, you need to do whatever I say. Became kind of like the, and it was an operating system that kind of subtly worked its way in, and people began to live in light of it without formally, if you just said that, hey, if somebody says they're hurt, you have to do whatever they want. Everybody goes, well, no, that doesn't make sense. But it's amazing how easily that can become the operating principle of an institution. So that'd be a simple example. You move out of the culture. You know, someone sent me one after the book came out. It was a picture of the southern side of the border wall. And written in big block letters across the wall, graffiti, was the word empathy. And I just thought, yeah, that's, that's what I'm talking about. Because the idea was whoever put that up there, whoever wrote that was basically saying, this wall, this boundary, this border is an offense to empathy. Empathy means you don't get to have borders. Empathy means you have no boundaries. And so at the personal, I think that's a good metaphor. Like at the interpersonal level, it means you have to feel what I feel. You can't make any judgment. You can't hold anything back. And if you try, if you say, well, wait a minute, that's that that was ungodly to say that. You don't really love me. Right. And so it becomes this, again, that tool of emotional blackmail. And so I thought the image was a nice one. And then of course at a political level, I think that's exactly with the immigration issue, exploiting Christian compassion or American compassion to say, here's people who are hurt. Here's people who are, whether it's refugees, here's kids, and all of the visuals. And then you actually look at what's happening. And you have, you know, millions of able-bodied men streaming across the border illegally. And it's like, we must take them because of empathy. The passion is the reason why we have to do that. And if you try to say, but wait a minute, are these people, do we know who they are? Is there another solution? What if there's another solution? We have to bring them all the way across the world. Couldn't they stay somewhere closer to home? All of those questions are ruled out of bounds because to ask them is to be unimpathetic. Yeah. So let me see if I can kind of articulate this correctly. And do crayons before me. So like, so if we were taking sympathy and apply it to this situation, you can say, okay, there's, there's difficult areas that people are living in. And we do want to care for those people. But we also have to tether ourselves to some objective realities. And the objective reality is you cannot move South America into North America. Right. That doesn't work. Also, we also, we need laws. We need to understand who's in our country for for the well-being of our own people and for the well-being of, yeah, the people that are coming here. Also, we should be concerned about things like child trafficking. So we should, we have this objective thing that we tether ourselves to. We do have sympathy towards the situation. Right. But we're able to apply reason, wisdom, prudence to the situation. Whereas empathy just says, okay, because they're hurting, whatever they need, ship all of them into the country, that's fine. You know, what we've lost. It's a blank tethering. It's a blank check. Yeah, that's, that's absolutely right. And I think that idea of like, you know, can we use reason, can we ask questions, can we have an open debate? And frequently, the emotional piece is what's used to shut down the debate. There's no time for that. You know, oftentimes it's, there's a crisis. And the truth is, there really are crises sometimes where it's like, you know, a slow motion deliberative debate is not appropriate, right? The house is on fire. We got to get the people out. But when everything is presented as a crisis, it's usually because we want to short circuit reason. We want to short circuit the debate process in order to get the thing done. We want to get done and we'll use any weapon to hand in order to do it. And so if that means exploiting and I think, you know, Christians in particular can be susceptible to this because we know that empathy really, our compassion is really a virtue. Like it's, it's something that the Bible commends to us, be kind and tenderhearted. We put those who weep. Jesus is our sympathetic high priest. All of these are given to us. And so we go, okay, that's what I'm, I'm a Christian. I want to do that. But we fail to see then how the definitions of those terms start to alter, you know, particularly in the modern world in a progressive way. So the progressives are now going to define what compassion really is. And this is one of the things I've, I've gotten into with, you know, when you write a book to the end of empathy, you have Christians who go, who want to sort of recover the term, keep it, say there's a good kind. And I'm, and I don't really want to fight with the people who make the right distinctions in substance, but want to call it something different. It's like, I don't want to fight about words. And I think that they ought to extend the same. But frequently they don't. They, for whatever reason, they really, that holding onto that word really, really matters to them. And as part of why I think I'm over the target. But even, even so, they often fail to realize just how influenced their definitions are. And that there is, even if they are very careful and precise and nuanced it, you know, I saw, there was another sign, there's a church in New York City. As the book is kind of launched and made some ways, it's, you know, been reviewed in various outlets, New York Times, places like that have seen it and want to connect to Trump and all this kind of stuff, which is all fine. But there was a church rainbow rainbow flag church in New York that said, if empathy is a sin sin boldly, reaching on the Martin Luther quote, you're going to sin sin boldly. And my question is always like, okay, evangelicals, you know, conservative Christians, when you use the word empathy, do you mean the same thing by that term that rainbow church does? Like is that what you mean? When he says, if empathy is a sin sin boldly, so I'm going to commit the sin of empathy. When the progressive rainbow churches do that, and they use that word, is that the same definition that you use? And I think most conservatives go, well, no, because that definition is indulgent. It's relativistic. You know, it's, it means you can't correct any sexual morality. All of those things, right? That definitely means you cannot have those boundaries. And I go, great, that's the thing that I'm attacking. And if you want to attack that too and call it, whatever you want to call it, great. I will welcome. But let's, let's make sure we identify where the real problem is. As opposed to fighting over whether we should call it sympathy or compassion, properly defined. So I do want to get into some of the way, and I think what's interesting, I think in your book, but definitely some of the interviews, you know, you kind of walk through, you know, you can go to the early stages of this, you know, with egalitarianism and such. And then you get to the later ones. And I think almost going backwards is really helpful. But maybe right before that, I think just to kind of drill down the theological side, right? I think you do a good job about lining like, okay, when Jesus goes into broken lives, which he does, he never untethers himself from the father, like he never untethers himself from the law, you know, and he finishes, he's like, go and sin no more, right? So there's this aspect of to use your illustration. It's like you reach into the broken person's life. And it's like, okay, I'm coming in here so that I can bring you immediately back into that, which is health, right? Which is salve. And you know, that's how Jesus always operates. He never untethers himself correct from that, which is good. But you'd be surprised. So one of the things, you know, so people have objected to sin of empathy, Christians have. And so I've been more precise sin of untethered empathy. So add the adjective as a way of clarifying. Okay, sure. You want to say there's a good kind of tethered empathy. Have at it. Untethered empathy. That's a problem. And the number of Christians, even even sometimes like David French was like, Jesus's empathy was untethered. He dove all the way in. And I'm like, well, what you're trying to say, I think I'm going to be as charitable as I can, is you're trying to say he really, really loved us. And I want to go, sure, really, really is fine. You want to use, you know, those kind of superlatives to get there. But did he untethered? Did he really untethered himself from God's moral standards? And it's like, of course not. If you think that, you think that he was willing to sin in order to save us, which he wasn't. And so it's like that's with a tethering piece is specifically tethered to the truth, tethered to what is good, tethered to God himself. That's the tethering. And if you lose touch with that. And that's true, not just of your pity, but of any of your emotions, all of your emotions need to be anchored. And there's ways in which like, again, we see this, see us Lewis again for loves, right? The whole notion of ordered loves is this idea that like your natural human loves, love of your family, love of your friends, romantic love, have to be governed by divine love. And if they're not governed, they go bad. And they still call themselves family love or mother love or romantic love or friendship. They still call the same name, but now because they've been detached from God's love, they become these really complicated forms of hatred. And so mother loves a really good example. The Lewis loves example, the great divorce. Yes, right? Great divorce. I mean, he's a thing, it's very clear that he'd experienced this or seen this and play out enough because he puts it in a lot where mother love is this beautiful thing that God gave. And yet when it's not anchored in God's love, it becomes tyrannical and possessive and devouring. He calls it, he says, the maternal vampire, who just sucks the life. He talks about the, she's the sort of woman who live for others. And you could always tell the others by their haunted expression, you know, like, and it's and it's that kind of deal where he's like, there's and and that person, what are they? What is that mother telling herself? Is she saying I'm being a devouring vampire? No, she's saying, I'm loving my family. Can you give that example from the great divorce? Yeah, so how that plays out? I think it's one of the most potent places in his, at least in his fiction. Yeah, yeah, good. So it's this woman, Pam, whose son died. And she's now damned. She's in hell. She's got, it's a great divorce, the meeting on the green plane, the damned souls and the solid spirits are meeting. And so she's meeting, I think they're brother and talking through like, where's my son? I want to see him. He's in heaven. And I want to see him. I want to see him now. And as they, as it goes through, she's just talking about how it's mother love, it's mother love. God, if your God was love, he would let me have my boy, all of these sort of things. And her brother is like, you have to learn to love something more than Michael. You have to love God more than Michael in order. You can't really love Michael. And if you do, if you try to love Michael, apart from love for God, then it turns into this rancid nasty thing, which is what it was in your earthly life, because she had like, you know, put her husband and daughter through hell in this like 10 years of ritualistic grief, never change anything and always going around with morning. And so they, just the tyranny of her sadness over the loss of her son had become this oppressive that had driven her family away. And so that, but it was a good example. And to the point that I'm in the end, she'd rather have her son with her in hell than to have him happy without her. And that, and that's a good, like, but she, in the name of love, yeah, in the name of love, I would rather have my son in hell. And so that's that kind of possessive. It goes wrong. All of our natural loves do this. And so what I did is loved Lewis and four loves on that principle, loves seeing it play out. And I said, is the love for the weak, the hurting and the suffering? Is it immune from this? Or like these other loves, it too can go bad, imprecise to the same way. And I think it did. And so that's what, that's worse than the empathy. So let's play out some of these modern examples. Okay. So maybe start with the trans, because I think that's the easy, most easily accessible. Everyone should be able to wrap their mind around that. And then to move backwards, to get towards egalitarianism and feminism, which at first glance might not seem so obvious, spread. The roots are there. Yeah. Good. So with the, with the trans thing, you can hear, would you rather have a dead son or a live daughter? So you, that's what the medical establishment, the counselors, the school officials are telling parents when their kids are indoctrinated in this gender ideology. And you have a boy who now says, I'm a girl. And parents are resistant. They're like, I don't know if we want to go along with this. You know, maybe it's just a phase. Maybe puberty's hard. You know, like I remember puberty. It was the worst. And no, no, no, we need to do puberty blockers. And we need to do some surgeries. And this is what will make them happy. And they were born in the wrong body. And the resistance eventually is met with if, would you rather have a dead son or a live daughter, meaning if you continue to resist in this way, then your son will commit suicide. Or they will say, your daughter will commit suicide. And you will, yeah, you, you have a son, but he's dead. Rather than go along with this, do the transition. And now you'll have a live daughter. That's an appeal to parental compassion, right? The whole, like, the, just break down resistance to any of where this is where this train is going, simply by saying, like, do you love your kid or not? That's the manipulation. That's the manipulation of parental empathy. And, and it's, and it's, the kid is going to be taught to say that. That's part of the indoctrination. And then all of the other officials are going to try to, like, swarm you. That's a good example of, like, we're going to adapt to the most reactive and immature people in this situation. And everybody else is going to pressure us to go along with it. And so the same things with using the preferred pronouns, right? Their feelings trump reality. Their feelings trump what's true. You have to lie in order to be compassionate to them, compassion demands that you say, call he a she a she a he. And those, so those are, and she feels, he feels like she's, he's whatever he she would. That man thinks he's a woman and therefore gets to use the girl's bathroom. That boy thinks he's a girl. Therefore gets to compete against the girls in sports. All of those, and if you try to resist those, it will be compassion for that individual, the demented, deranged, sexually insane person that will be compassion for them means you have to go along with it. Or at least don't resist it too much. And this is actually a really good example of one of the features of untethered empathy, which is it's very selective. It's highly, it's like a spotlight. It focuses on certain people's pain and feelings and not others. So when that boy wants to shower in the girl's locker room, all of the attention is placed on him and the emotional turmoil and how hard it's been for him because he's never felt at home in his body. And don't you feel compassion for him. And don't you want to, it's a simple thing. Just let him use the bathroom that he wants. Right. And so all the compassion, it's like, what about the compassion for the girls who are going to have to deal with this, right? We're going to have a boy in their locker room watching them. And it's like, well, we don't compassion for them is off the table. It's not even because it's not as broken as that because because it's myopic. It just picks. So like this is why Paul Bloom wrote a book called against empathy back in 2016. He's a secular guy. But he said, when most people hear the word empathy, they think of kindness. He said, I think of war. Because empathy for one group for your in group means hatred for your outgroup. Like so, so Bloom looks at the Middle East and he's like this way too much empathy in the Middle East. And that just like blows most people's minds. They don't look at Israel Palestine and think too much empathy. But he's like, no, no, if you actually examine it, it's like empathy for it. And it doesn't matter which side you come down on. I'm not making any judgments about the geopolitical situation itself. The point is team sports and tribalism is driven by I feel compassion for this group. And therefore I can rationalize and justify hatred and cruelty towards that group or vice versa. That's interesting because there was kind of a war taking place in the media, right? So we're I don't mean army, I mean their media in that they would go around and they would try to take pictures and videos of horrific things on both sides. Israel would do this. And the whole goal was to play on the empathy of the West and say, you need to either not get involved or get involved in this way. So they were just, they were both trying to show, well, it's more, you know, it's more detriment. We're more injured and hurt. Yeah. And that's the and the rules of the game are set up that way. I remember after October 7th, when Hamas slaughtered those civilians and did these horrific things. The spokesman for Hamas was on TV publicly saying we're victims. Everything we do is justified. And I'm like, that's empathetic logic. That's the rules that we set up. The rules that we set up is the greatest victim wins. I affectionately refer to the last 15 years as the victim hotel Olympics. Because what happened is that when people realize, once you incentivize and you say, if you're them, if you may, if you were the biggest victim, if the, you've had the most evil done to you, then you will have a competition to see who gets to sit at top of that pyramid because that person is in the driver's seat. That person sets the agenda. And so when you, when you break down critical race theory or all the forms of critical theory and the intersectional idea where you kind of, well, I'm a member of this, you know, minority group and that minority group. So I'm racial, a racial minority. I'm a woman, not a man. I'm gay, right? And you just work you and you just add up all of your intersectional points. Whoever has the most wins. And that person is now in charge. That for a good stretch of time, that was the way that, you know, universities, corporations, the government, they were operating according to that logic. And so if you're white and if you're male and heterosexual, you're at the bottom, you're just the oppressor. And then everybody else is some gradation of victim. And therefore, their needs and desires are the ones that will be elevated. And I'm not denying that there may have been real evil scattered all throughout that in terms of like real victims. But this is the problem is once you set up that incentive structure, you'll get a lot of posters too. And so in the real victims get lost. And instead of having, you know, abuse means this. Abuse is a very particular like physical psychological or physical and emotional or sexual violence like violence. Now, now abuse is your feelings microaggressions, right? That whole category was playing into this victimhood ideology that was fueled by untethered empathy. That's interesting because it really does create a new objective moral code, right? So it's always calibrating based on which person's the most broken or pushed to the side, what do they need? And then we create new moral structures. And there's your example of like, we should care for young ladies. Everyone should agree upon that. But at one point, there was also a movement movement that will get to that like overemphasize that. But then you bring in the trans movement. It's like, yeah, but now we've got a more broken person. So we need to put that man who thinks he's a girl into that girl's locker room. And it's like, you know, there you go, the moral code shifts, it becomes objective, culturally speaking, and it gets more and more radicalized and crazy. That's right. So you have to get that there's this emotional dynamic underneath fueled by empathy, that's then rationalized in terms of the various theories to justify it, right? So I think a lot of times in the middle of these debates in the church and without an outside of the church, there was a, it was basically like, we spend a lot of time on the reason side. Like, hey, we think we think this is an argument over what's true and what's good. And, you know, so here's let's let's analyze the arguments for a critical theory. And it was like, it was actually fuel much barbed by an emotional thing. And that's how it was able to penetrate so far into churches was because Christians wanted to be compassionate. And they end rightly so. But they didn't realize how it was getting hijacked. It took longer for them to start to go like, well, wait, so they would, so I think a lot of Christians went along with things that they were a little uncomfortable with. Like, I don't know if that's really going to help, but they're saying, this is what compassion means. Compassion means we do this. So I guess we'll do it. And then they may have had reservations, but they were afraid to say out loud, I don't think this is wise because if they did, then they were going to be called all kinds of nasty names. You're an abuse enabled. You're, you're, you want to revictimize them. Who do you think you are? You've benefited so much. You systems of repression. All of that, all of those tools will just be, you know, you're a bigot. You're a misogynist. You're a hater. You're a homophobic. Whatever the terms we're going to be just leveled at you. And so you're like, I will do what it takes to be a compassionate empathetic person. And I'll go along with it. So, so the trans movement is kind of like the apotheosis. And I think is responsible for why this conversation now for a lot of people will feel like yes, right? Like I think there's the backlash or whatever you call it in the last, you know, year. So it's because people were like, well, that's just a bridge too far. If you move back a step, the gay rights movement operated on the same engine. And it was, it was just back then, you know, so go back 10 years ago, 15 years ago with the push for gay marriage, kind of across the country, before Obergefell unleashed it all. What was the basic argument? And it was like these, you, you can get married. These people are sad because they want to, they want to be married and they can't because society's bigoted and impressive. And so look how sad these gay people are. We need to expand, expand marriage to include them. That was the basic argument. They're sad because they can't get married. They want the same rights. And they can't, you know, if, if their partner is sick, they can't go visit them in the hospital. Isn't that sad? Aren't you sad about that? And it was all of the, so it was like that was the heartstrings that were pulled on to sort of mute like, hey, but marriage for all of human history has been one man, one woman, you know, or, you know, at the, in the demented societies you get polygamy, but like nobody has ever thought that two men could be married, married because marriage was about procreation. And it needed the complementarity of the sexes in order to be a real thing. And sex is powerful. And so we wanted to tie it down with covenants and oaths before God and witnesses because sexual energy is very potent and can be very destructive and not channeled. And so marriage was this thing and everybody's going, well, I think marriage is a thing, but these people are sad. Like that's what, that's, that was the logic. And it was very, and it was successful. They moved the needle by appealing to people's empathy. And then the Supreme Court, you know, you know, remove the last barrier. And then there's a straight line from the LGB to the TQ plus. And I think that right now, a major part of the challenge for conservatives, for evangelicals, for Christians, conservative Christians is the culture is ready to kind of cut off the TQ plus. They're like 78 genders, it's nuts, boys and girls' locker rooms, it's nuts. That girl who should have won the, you know, silver medal didn't because she got supplanted. Like all of it, so like all of a sudden, and some of it is because empathy for those girls has finally kicked in, and now you have competing empathy. Right. Like so that's part of what's going on there. And so I think culturally to do that is fine. But if you say, okay, and then, Obergothel has been a disaster. And it has to go. Obergothel to lend a hand. It must be destroyed. It must be overturned. We have to roll that back and we have to reestablish marriages, one man, one woman, one lifetime for the good of children. That's a harder sell right now. But the same sort of, and this is where like I'm not opposed to the use of emotional appeals. There's a place for emotional appeals, but they need to be tethered to reality. And so what's the reality? Well, kids need a mom and a dad. And so if you look out of the culture, you're like, how is it that two men can purchase a child through the surrogacy market? Like what? Like when you hear that, like, here's a guy, this guy's a pedophile. And he has a husband. He's a convicted pedophile. He couldn't adopt. If you went to an adoption agency, instead of like to adopt a two year old, they'd be like, no. But can he pay a woman? Can he provide his semen and pay a woman to just date a baby and purchase the baby from her and then raise it as his own? Absolutely. That's legal. Why is that? And people go, how is that legal? It's like Obergothel. It's just downstream. It's all like the policy was reorganized because we said there is no material difference between two men and a husband and a wife. They're the same, which means any barriers, well, those two men physically can't conceive because there's no womb. Well, then they should be able to purchase one. They should be able to rent one. They should be able to rent a womb in order to have a baby because that would be as equality. And if they don't, they'll be sad. You don't want them to be sad, right? So all of that same. And so helping people see that there's a deep structural logic in the LGP to the TQ plus. And then using the recoil and revolves in the TQ plus and at the the clear harm being done to children who are deprived, even in the best best of circumstances, so to speak, of the love of a mother and a father biologically related to them. Like we deliberately are doing this to kids. It's, it's, it's awful. Terrific. It's a grave injustice. And to say, that has to go to. And, and you can't let the so-called compassion for people who are sad, but who have filled with vial affections overrule what's good and right according to God's law and human flourishing. How much of this is a, the fact that our culture has become kind of obsessed with adults. And we really just, we don't like children as a culture. And to give kind of an example. And I'm not giving any approaching judgments on this individual, but Putin really had a really interesting speech. It was like four or five years ago. I think it was at the G six seven, whatever that is. And they were grilling him about the fact that they don't have gay marriage in Russia. Yeah. And his answer, like him or not, like, was just, it was really profound. And he's like, listen, I'm not terribly concerned with what like a couple of adults are doing in their bedroom. But if we solidify this, yeah, then we're creating this as an overarching narrative for the children, which we know if they go down this path, it's going to be harmful for them. And it can open up all of the things that you're talking about. But that's, you know, at least in his answer, he's, he's prioritizing children, which is really what marriage is supposed to do. But we don't prioritize children. We prioritize the desires and the lusts of adults that are sin-written. Yeah. So there's a great organization called them before us. Katie Faust is the founder. She's out in Seattle. And their basic goal is to prioritize children's needs over adult desires. That's it. And so what children's rights? What she wants? Children's rights. What do they have a right to? A right to a mother and a father. That's a natural human right to having, and now sometimes this isn't happened. Mom dies, dad dies. There's, you know, evil happens. And you have orphans where you have single parents. That's tragic. But we're deliberately, that's a brokenness that we want to restore through adoption or remarriage or whatever else. Like we try to, like that's a brokenness that we recognize. We want to restore it. What we're doing is we're deliberately breaking it in order to suit adult desires. And in this case, vile desires. And I think that's, and I always try to underscore, like, sodomy is gross and it's, and it's awful. Like it's not just because the one part of the success of the rhetoric of the, of the gay rights movement was in hiding some of the degeneracy under this veneer of normalcy. So you think about the way it was portrayed in pop culture, like willing grace and Ellen and those kind of things in the late 90s, early 2000s, modern family, modern family. As like, this is, they're just funny people. They're just funny. And it's like, I don't have a problem with funny people. There's no objection whatsoever to funny people being funny or likable. Like the issue is like, what are the sexual organs for? And how can we, how does society, inner obedience to God structure relationships for the good of children? That's the question. But that, but notice, that's a question of like right and wrong, wise and foolish, good and evil. All of that, those are moral questions, true questions of truth. And in the grip of undead and empathy, all of that gets just because compassion for this person in front of me who really, really wants something and they can't have it. I've kind of shifted over the years. I'll shift kind of the way that I respond, especially if someone who is a homosexual kind of asked me, so like, what do you think about this? And you know, I think the answer that I've landed on now is like, listen, when I graduated undergrad, like, I lived with two buddies, you know, and it was great. And like, having friends and if you want to live with friends, like, that's fine. But like, if you go into the bedroom and you do that act, which is, I mean, the, the member that brings life, you don't put in the orifice, the dispel of death. Like, that's not good for you. That's not good for anybody. Right. If you're artsy, if you're not interested in marriage, like whatever, those are fine things. It's like, it's pretty simple. It's like, just don't do that thing, which everyone should just be able to acknowledge. Like, yeah, it's disgusting. It's gross. Just don't do that. Stop there. Like, and there you go. And, and I think that's a good example of there is a, I think, for most people, a moral gag reflex, it kind of kicks in whenever you're contemplating that, that was smothered because, no, no, that would make people feel bad. And that's not kind. Right. So don't, we don't talk about that. I mean, one level is vial. You don't want to talk about vial things you don't have to. But at some level, it's like, no, that's, that's the, that's the issue. The issue is not all of the other accoutrements. It's not all of the other, like, some, you know, like those things may matter because they feed that. If I'm, if I'm trying to have as a pastor, and I have someone who is dealing with same-sex attraction, I want to think about like, well, are there other things in your life, other narratives that you're believing, other things about yourself, that you're feeding certain impulses and desires, are you putting them to death? But at root, it's like, that's the tendency. Like, that's, this is the issue. The anus is in the sex organ. Sorry. God did not make it for that. So orgasm with another man. Exactly. This is, this is, and so because of that, it's a grave injustice when society decides we're going to totally reorient around these adult desires. And so from the trans back to Obergefell, there's just a straight line and they both have to go. Like, they, like, we have to, like, that's the target. And we ought to be clear about it. So when people say you want to, you want to roll back gay rights, you want to take marriage away. It's like, I'm not taking away. Can they ever had it? Whatever the state said, it was not true. But I want to tell the truth. And two men who are committing sawdemy are not married. And we got, and our human laws, American laws ought to reflect that fact. So let's go to egalitarianism and feminism. And I think this is really interesting because it underlines, I think a lot of this. And especially once you get kind of that, that hierarchical structure, that God builds into creation. Once you, once you turn that around, it leads towards everything else. Right. Yeah. So you go back one more step, at least, is going to be the way that feminism in particular has contributed to these sorts of slides into immorality, sexual morality in particular. And the reason is, so the angle that I'm coming at it from with the empathy question is, women by nature are the more empathetic sex. God designed them this way. And it's a really good thing. So I think that this is a really gorgeous to underline. People usually skip this part, but female empathy is a blessing. It's a great thing. It's why women are such good moms. It's why they're the hospitality, welcome. It's why their first responders, when people are in pain, the female impulse to move toward the hurting with care and love and compassion is a great blessing. But it's a blessing in its place. And what I mean by that is there are times, Bible talks this way, in which pity and compassion are absolutely forbidden. So for example, in the Old Testament law, if you're dealing with a first-degree murderer, if you're dealing with someone who's trying to entice you into abandon the Lord and worship idols, even if they're your son or your daughter, your wife whom you love, your friend, your best friend, you're trying to entice you, the Bible says, in Deuteronomy, your eyes shall not pity them. Pity is inappropriate. Your natural human compassion, whatever affection you have, needs to be subordinated to love for God. Okay, so there's times where it's forbidden, which means are there occasions, are there places in which that female tendency to move toward the weak in the hurting with care and compassion could become a liability? And I want to say yes, and one of the first places is in guarding the doctrine and worship of the church. So God designed men and women differently to complement one another. And part of that complementarity is that men are the sex that has greater capacity to draw clearer lines when it comes to doctrine and worship. The push for female ordination is kind of this gateway because what you're doing is you're saying, what's the unique thing that pastors do? Lay people can care for people when they're hurting, they can go over, they can sit in hospital rooms. It's good that pastors do that too. They're representing Christ and they're modeling for their people, how to shepherd. But the fundamental unique thing about pastor office is guarding the doctrine and worship of the church. So you put women there with their tendency towards empathy. And all it takes is for the false teaching to put on the sad face and all of a sudden open the doors. Right? Unlock the gate. Which is, and if people go, that sounds misogynistic. I'm saying, I'm making actually a historical argument. Why is it that the churches which began ordaining women in the 50s, 60s and 70s, with thinking of the mainline churches like the PCUSA or the ELCA or the Church of Christ or the Congregationalists, why all of these churches that met the Methodists, we're going to ordain women to the ministry. In very short order began to sanction, it's out of me, and solemnize it through marriage or have ordain homosexuals to the preel, practicing opening, open homosexuals to the priest. Why did that happen so fast? And the answer was is because the same like they gave in to the ladies out of compassion, the ladies were sad because they couldn't be pastors. And so you just worked in that if you're sad, you get your way. And then you put the people who are going to be most susceptible to that appeal, in the driver's seat. And then of course, then he just slides down. It's a very clear progression, and it makes sense like you can see the dynamics that work, which is why women's ordination is a watershed issue in church communion. You can't treat it like it's a, oh, it's no big deal because it has to do with who's going to guard the doctrine of worship of the church. And God built men for that and then gave them a list of qualifications that you need to be this kind of man in order to do that job, like the Levites and the Old Testament, who how did they get their call to ministry? Like when, when, what, did God look at the Levites and go, man, you guys are the kindest and most tenderhearted people ever. You'll be great priest. He said, no, it was at the golden calf when Moses said, who's on the Lord's side? And the Levites came running up and he said, go slay the brethren who are committing idolatry. And they did. And God said, you guys will be great priests. You're willing to cut things off. You're willing to draw clear lines. Right? That would be the application. I'm not advocating whatever you have to make, make the necessary adjustments. But it's, it's remarkable when you look at the Old Testament, the qualifications for priests. They carried swords for a reason. They had to guard the sanctuary. If they didn't, God would break out in judgment. This was a big deal. And so I think that it's, it's a weighty responsibility to take on the pastoral office. And that's why God is so has specified it. That's why there were no priestesses in the Old Testament. That's why when you move into the New Testament, I don't permit a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man in first Timothy. Why is it men? Why did Jesus have 12 disciples who were all men? Even though he valued women and their contributions to the kingdom and his church, like he clearly did, but why in that role? Because the guarding of the doctrine and worship of the church is so important that he's fit men to do it in ways that he has not fit women to do it. He's fit women to do other glorious things. Bear children, keep home, be the, the glue that holds communities together, do the all of the helping and assisting roles throughout the body of Christ. Like there's so many places. It's just not that one. I like the example of Finhas. Yeah, yeah, too. Right. I mean, it's just like what is it they're procreating with the Moe bite women? Yeah, right in front of the East. The first pride parade. Yes. Yeah, it is. Yeah. I see he comes strutting down Main Street with his Midianite bride and and it's interesting. Moses and the elders are all weeping at the Ten of meeting. They're just like, this is horrible. That this is happening in Israel. And Finhas is like, I think we can do better. Yeah. And he grabs the spear and just pins under the ground and God says, you'll make your great priest. And like I think that those are the parts of the Bible that we kind of are a little uncomfortable with. But there is something instructive for us in it helps to give that kind of underlying logic so that it doesn't feel I think the way it feels a lot of modern people. If you say, well, Paul said women can't be pastors. It feels arbitrary. It's like, well, why? If she's smart, if she's competent, why can't she do the same job? It's like because part of that job has to do with the gendered tendencies that God has built into men and women. And and the order that he's established in creation and that he's carries through in this patterned way in marriage and then in the church and then out into society. Like that patriarchal principle is a real one that God did. And if you live in light of it, like women actually do flourish. They actually, like they're free to be women instead of like that. So the feminism, but in this way, women's ordination is ecclesiological transgenderism. Right. So it's like, what? Why did they start to think that we could, you know, turn a man into a woman or a woman into a man with surgery and chemicals. And it's like, well, because the church told them that manhood and womanhood was a relevant for the pastoral office despite what God said. God said it was relevant. And we said, but it's not. And so the culture said, great. We can do, we can play this too. They're interchangeable. That's the fundamental thing at the ideological level running through feminism to gay marriage to transgender is interchangeability. Yeah. There's something about the relationship between Christ and his church. Right. And then you've got male pastors that are supposed to step into the role of Christ. And but as soon as you throw females in there now, it's like you've got a female in relationship with the church. And I mean, yeah, exactly. It's like it underpins all of the other downfalls. Exactly. If there is that symbolic, um, sacramental kind of dimension to this, Lewis is really good on this. He's got an article priestesses in the church. It's a great one. It's a great one. And it talks about like, you know, the ancient world was crawling with priestesses. This wasn't like when people try to say, well, they just didn't have a category for this in the first century. That's why Paul said no, but we know better now. It's like, uh, all of the ancient religions had priestesses. They did. Like this was not this wouldn't have like they had categories. It's just a very different kind of religion. Mm hmm. And so yeah. So if if you're, um, if the minister representing Christ as a woman and the church is a woman and they're married, there you go. There's let that's lesbian marriage right there. And instead, God wants like, these are deep structures to reality that then God unfolds for us in the history of redemption, from households to priesthood to the church that are meant to then be blueprints and models for society to to imitate and under the blessing of God. He blesses it because we're cutting with the grain of reality as opposed to cutting against it according to our own passions and desires. So if you got a lot of pushback on this, and there's any of it been thoughtful. Uh, I've gotten a lot of pushback. It's not always been thoughtful. So I would say among the two big categories. So the world just lumps it all together and they think that we're just bad people. We're heartless and cruel. Despite writing a chapter called in praise of compassion, by and large, they want to just lump this into Christian nationalism discussions and say this is why Trump can do bad things like deport illegals. Um, which is fine. I'm happy for it to be a part of that conversation. Among other Christians, there's the folks who want to define terms differently than I do and are way whizzed up about that in ways that I'm not. Um, so that's one. And then the feminism thing does has set off even some other like, um, folks who would call themselves complementarians or who would be, um, you know, who would believe in male only ordination. They didn't like that I was trying to ground, um, God's laws in, in the creational tendencies. Right. Like in they, they, they, they wanted it to be like God said it. That's enough. We don't need reasons. And so if I come in and say, hey, well, at least one reason why God restricts the pastoral office to men has to do with the way he's built men and women differently and the way that compassionate empathy could be liabilities if you're guarding something. Um, they did not like that because they felt like it, um, demeaned women, or as I feel like it's honoring to them and to say like, you guys just, you're not, don't try to be a third-rate man. Just be a glorious woman. Yeah. Like be that. Um, and, uh, and so those are some of the, those are some of the criticisms. Often they're not as careful. They, they, the big, the critical book book reviews have typically been caricatures or have missed the qualifications that I do put in the book. Um, but that's fine. Like the overwhelmingly, the controversy's been good. Um, more people have kind of gone, hey, wait a minute. And it started to see it once she, because once you see it, all of a sudden you start to realize it's running through a whole lot of stuff. Um, and I do try, I think, uh, which we're saying this, I do try to avoid, um, falling into the other ditch of apathy or heartlessness, um, by saying like, that's a problem, but it's one that most of us recognize, um, as a problem. Uh, and if so, if I'd written a book called the sin of apathy, shrug, um, everybody would have just been like, that's fine. Sin of heartlessness. Oh yeah, let's, let's hit that again. Um, but it was this that was sort of the sacred cow and they're for needing to get shut down. It does seem like feminism's kind of that last domino to fall. Right. Right. In that, you know, at me, maybe a good example is even just women fighting in war. Yeah. Right. And I think Louis Marcos made a really good point. Uh, and he draws on, um, on the line, the witch and the wardrobe where father Christmas is like disusing, like, it's, it's really ugly when women fight wars are ugly when women fight. And, you know, part of that is, I think an important part is the reason men go out and fight is because it is their job to go out and protect the home and the home is going to be centered around the wife and around the children. And if so, so in other words, as you kind of restore these proper hierarchy and the masculine tendency, it is that understanding of the reason that that is there, the reason that barriers there is so that the man can give his life for the wife. So it really is a raising of the femininity. It's not a diminishing. Right. Yeah. So he, he sacrifices, he lays down his life, a faithful man is going to lay down his life. And then there will be glory. And what's the glory of man, woman's the glory of man. Right. And she bears fruit in the form of children. And those kind of that, but that's a deep logic that's counter to the modern interchange ability lie that were all just cogs that can be plugged and played. People really, really have a version to a recovery of that. But I do think the point you made about the theological combat is right or combat is right. And it's part of it. It's another way of getting at part of the task of shepherds in the church is to fight wolves. But battles are ugly when women fight. Then we don't want to put our women forward for theological combat. That's not ideal. Now, some people have said, but don't have, you know, there's conservative women who I mentioned Katie Faust who is kind of, you know, this CEO president of this institution that I think is really great. And I go, well, when the barbarians have already breached the gates and they're trans and the kids every which way, I'm not in it. And there's a woman over there like wheeling a frying pan and knocking out, you know, I'm not going to be like, Hey, I don't think you're supposed to be doing that. Yeah. Right. I think in a healthy society and a society that was obedient to God and that was seeking to honor him, I don't think that that sort of thing would be necessary. They just wouldn't be because and I think the other, the other dynamic here that I think is important is because people say, well, you're saying women are empathetic and then therefore they let errors in. It's important to stress that the first people though that gave in were the guys because female agitation is really uncomfortable for men. I think that's an important part of your talk. It's a huge, it's a huge thing and it's because and it's because we've been taught women of the weaker vessel, which they are and live with your wife in an understanding way. And therefore by extension, women in general, you pull punches because you were taught when you were little, if you were taught well, don't hit girls. You can wrestle with the boys. If you have a problem with another guy, take it out back and deal with it. Like that's an okay thing. Guys can tussle that way and work things out. You don't do that to your sister. You wrestle with your brother but not with your sister. And so then those deep habits are formed into men and then all of a sudden, if you throw women into theological combat, they enter the boxing ring and they want to be treated as equals. It's like men don't know what to do. And then on top of that, unhappy women like that is a is a weakness for men. Men, weak men will give in in order to keep her happy. Even if that means giving or something that would be bad for it. I think actually a really interesting tying it into the empathy thing in the Bible is Job. I think it's an underappreciated aspect of that story that Job's wife has undergone about the most horrific thing that any woman can imagine. Ten children dead like that or husbands, this household, this life that they built together is in ruins and the future is gone because their kids are all dead. And she comes to her husband sitting in sackcloth and ashes and says, are you still holding faster integrity? Cursed God die. And as a pastor, I go, well, like she's a grieving mother. Like I get where those words are coming from. Like she's angry. She's sad. This is grief. Like have some compassion for this grieving mother, right? And Job looks at her and says, you're speaking like a foolish woman. And I just think that's takes some serious backbone in that moment to look at your wife in her tears and grief and anger and say, that is not how we talk. God is God, right? Lord gives. Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. I'm not going to turn my back. Why was he able to do that? Because he was tethered. He was a man who feared the Lord. He was tethered to God even in the face of his wife's anger and sadness and grief. And I can imagine many pastors in that situation. Job comes and says, my wife just told me this. What should I do? Well, you know, maybe identify with her. And Job go, I already am. I'm in sackcloth and ashes. I lost my kids too. Well, maybe, you know, like in other words, soft compassion, have some compassion on her. And I think Job, if he had his wits about him, would say, I did. The compassion was not giving in to where her sinful feelings wanted to take her. Her sinful feelings wanted to take her to deny the God who made her the source of the only only comfort and hope that we possibly have in this situation is God himself. And she's trying to cut herself off from him. And so Joe. So people, I think look at that story and say, that wasn't really compassionate. And I look at it and I go, that was Job grabbing hold of Jesus and going, honey, stay with me. That's what was happening there. But it doesn't look to the world. It looks very unimpathetic because it was an indulgent and it wasn't soft, but it had had standards, but it's that biblical compassion. It's the sort of thing. It will bleed and die and take the heat. Like I can imagine that after he said that, it was probably a cold meal that night, right? Like it did not, you know, Lord, it seems like she, by the end of the book, they're having kids again. And you know, there's a light. There is future God brings life from the dead. But I don't know how long did it take for that to thaw? And how much of it was Job's unwavering, endurance, not just of the external suffering, but of this. I mean, that relational displeasure and anger that like that was what helped keep her from abandoning the Lord. It is a potent lesson for husbands of the tyranny of the urgent to where you're like, oh, I just need to make this situation better right now. You know, and in the process, you're actually cutting off this long term health and healing that's being offered by tethering yourself to the good, true and beautiful. That's right. So let's just take a look at the, we got about eight minutes. Yeah. So if you just want to kind of take us through, where can we go from here? We've identified the problem. Yeah. And so how do we start to correct this, particularly in the church? Yeah. So I think we're a recovery of sober mind in this. So the companion book to sin of empathy is called leadership and emotional sabotage. And it's more on the positive, prescriptive side. But the, the main virtue I'm committing in that book is sober mind in this, which is at the front of all of the elder qualifications. It's this virtue that I think for many years, I overlooked. It was just one of those Bible words that you kind of, it's in a list and you just glaze over it. And when you start to think about what it means is, it means something like don't get drunk on other people's passions. Don't get drunk on your own passions. sober sober be sober, not drunk, but it's not just alcohol. You have to worry about it's your feelings are potent. And do they run the show? Do they toss you about? Do other people's feelings toss you about? Well, sober minded people know they have a steadiness. They're anchored. They have some gravity, some substance to them because they trust the Lord. And because of that, they can see things clearly. They're not clouded by emotions. So when we talk about our passions and say like, I was overwhelmed by grief. I was paralyzed by fear. I was blinded by anger. Those emotions, we know that they have a, they impair our ability to think clearly. And so, sober minded people go, nope, I'm going to govern. My feelings are going to salute Jesus and I'm going to govern them. The recovery of that is what enables you at a practical level, like we just talked about husbands and wives, to not live by the, if mama ain't happy, ain't nobody happy, school of husbanding, you know, happy wife, happy life, where you're just trying to placate because and Christians will baptize that kind of appeasement with like, be a servant leader, servant leadership, which is basically kneecapping the leadership part and becoming a slave of your wife's feelings. And she'll despise you for it. It won't work. And it's like you said, it's a short term, quick fix mentality. And we baptize it and make it sound like this is the sacrificial thing, just do what she wants. But it's actually, no, the hard thing in this situation for you is actually to have a conversation that you don't really want to have. It's easier just to give in and just keep your mouth shut. It's harder to say, you know what? I don't think that what she's wanting is right in this circumstance. So I'm going to like hold my ground and have the conversation, living with her in an understanding way, showing honors, a weaker vessel, all of that still applies. But you're the one who's actually leading now, not simply acquiescing. And so I think that that's a major, like a first place that I would be looking for some kind of action or recovery would be starting with yourself, taking responsibility, not putting your own emotions, or not letting other people steer your emotional vehicle, right? Like, hey, you can have the keys to my emotional car wherever you want to take me off a cliff. That's fine. No, my emotions go where God wants them to go. And I'm going to govern them. And then from that, then you can lean into these really gnarly situations, agitated angst, turmoil, reactive. But you can bring some steadiness and other people, you're tethered to Christ and they can start, they can be tethered to you and therefore get tethered to him. And so you're just like reforming, there's, you know, image, it's like a nucleus, right? It just like pulls together so that our planet, right? Like the sun is the center of the solar system and it's what makes the planets orbit properly. Right? Well, that's God. He's the sun. We want to orbit. But then the moons in our lives, right? Those who depend upon us or wife or kids, right? They can orbit properly if we're orbiting properly. It's like it all works by gravity, which is this invisible force. That's why it's hard to kind of pin down. But at some level, get some gravity, right? Fear the Lord and get some gravity. And then I think one other element that I was underappreciated is the role of gratitude and joy for a leader that it's not, don't be so, so sober and serious that it's just gloom. But instead like be the, be fun dad, rejoice in the wife of your like youth, bring the joy and the gladness of gravity and gladness together. Is it really potent combo? Well, Dr. Joe Rigni, I appreciate your time with us. And yeah, please go check out this book. You know, I think it's a fantastic book. And it's really a, as we've talked about here, it's really identifying something that for myself, as you kind of put it, it just, it opened my eyes and you start to see this thread that weaves through all things. And it makes, it makes sense of a lot of chaos. Right. And that's around us. I appreciate your work. Yeah. Thanks. Yeah. God bless and cheers.