Welcome to hallway transgressions. I'm Chris. I'm Ryan.
We are two private school alumni and this podcast serves to examine the worldviews of Christian pastors and teachers through a postmodern lens.
Trigger warning, this episode discusses topics that may be controversial, offensive, or triggering in nature to some individuals. Listen at your own risk.
Hey Ryan, what's your bright spot?
Alright, so it's been a while since our last go, so there's a lot of time for my bright spot, which the biggest one is that Natalie and I have moved into a nicer apartment.
We were in a low budget one because we had moved here both not having jobs, so we needed something that would be semi-sustainable.
And now that we're both working, we were able to get into what I would call a luxurious apartment complex that even has valet trash pickup.
We got our trash outside right now, they're going to pick it up for us. I don't have to go to the dumpster anymore. No more dumpsters for Ryan.
The valet trash, we have it here too, and it sounded like the dumbest thing when we moved in and then we started using it and I was like, no, this is the greatest thing ever.
It's amazing. It's Sunday through Thursdays, they have it Friday and Saturday, they don't pick up.
So just like if our trash is semi-full, I just go put it outside, put a new trash bag in, and we're good to go. All done.
It's way less of a chore now than what it used to be having to walk across parking lots to get to the dumpster.
I've always, growing up, I was the one that always had to take the trash out too.
And so it's just like, yeah, I'm never moving to a place that doesn't have this again.
Yeah, it's pretty nice. Yeah, we just went to the pool for the first time today too. Really nice pool.
Mostly like young adults, maybe middle-aged adults that were like no kids at the pool, so it was really peaceful.
That's the key word for this place is peaceful.
We had so much noise at the last place just like stomping and yelling above us like 24-7.
And then we come here and it's like so silent that sometimes it feels awkward just with how quiet it is.
You're going to get trained into that silence and then any noise at all is just going to be running to the window to see who's making noise.
Oh, for sure. But like, I feel like this place just insulated really well
because there's construction across the parking lot and I can't hear it when I'm inside.
It's like really loud when I'm going through our like front door and then it's just you close the door and it's just quiet.
That's funny. Our places, I could just hear every sound, but it's also new.
So yeah, this place is brand new. Their first move in was in November.
So we're the first ones living in this apartment. Isn't that nice?
It is. Though the new appliances were really loud at first, like the washing machine was like really loud at first.
It had to like break itself in or something because now it works fine.
But it was annoyingly loud. Maybe it's just because we weren't used to the silence. Who knows?
Maybe. That's nice. Yeah. And what's your bright spot?
Like you said, it's been a long time and in that time I was able to switch my job, got a new place, loving it so much.
The old place wasn't in an industry that I really cared about.
But this new place is working towards a goal and a future that I think is cool in health care.
So it's really nice to be there and I love my team. They're all a bunch of great people and it's been having a great time, great culture and just feels really nice.
I'm also a remote worker again, so it feels nice to be in a remote culture again.
I'm very antisocial at work, so it's nice just to have Slack messages for people that I can ignore when I need to ignore them.
Yeah, that's nice. You probably shouldn't ignore a Slack messages, though. I don't know. In my experience, it's bad.
Just for a little bit. It depends on who it is, too. Yeah, I get to work from home two days a week now, Tuesdays and Thursdays, which is really nice.
It makes when I go into the office easier because I have the motivation of I just got to make it through this day and then I don't have to go into work tomorrow.
That's actually nice. I think my favorite part of this company's culture is on Fridays from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. my time.
We do it's called Friday Firewall and we someone gets to make a playlist of music playlist over the week and then they submit it and we start up a little Internet radio for the company and everyone gets to listen in.
And we all just get to talk about people's music taste and the songs we like.
The only rule is not to make fun of people's taste. So just the songs we like.
Yeah, it's it's it's actually a perk they list on their job descriptions now because it's I don't know. It's really fun. Everyone enjoys it. I love it.
Firewall Friday. Why is it called Firewall Friday? I have no clue. Did it start with firewalls?
It's probably just because no one does work at 3 to 5 p.m. So it's just a way to like chill like we're all in the Slack channel talking about the music and I don't think anyone's actually doing work.
That makes sense. Yeah, it's super fun. All right. So today we're doing something new for our third episode.
So I guess we're still a baby podcast and we can do whatever we want and no one cares.
So we're not going to be responding like we did last episode.
So the episode that we're responding to is season three episode three. We're skipping season three episode two because it was a short episode and there was a lot of tech issues and stuff that they were doing.
So we're just going to jump over to season three, which is titled No Marriage in Heaven, Then Why Bother, which I guess is a little spoiler.
It's 40 minutes long and it took them 17 minutes to even get to the first question.
So there's not much to respond to. It's basic cookie cutter Christian marriage stuff.
I don't know if you know this, but Luke Johnson has another podcast called Healthy Homes and he did two episodes on marriage and that podcast.
And I listened to him and it's just the same stuff. Like if you grew up in the church or church adjacent, you probably listened to this stuff from a pastor when they have their, oh, don't bring the kids here because it's going to be explicit like marriage podcast kind of thing.
So nothing super exciting in these episodes. So we thought we would just pull the student questions or the student question and just kind of roll with it and have more of a conversation for this episode.
Yeah. So there was only like a couple questions in this episode in itself.
And the first one was if there is no marriage in heaven, what's the point? And then the second one was just ideal dating age question mark.
So we will also be just responding to that question itself and not necessarily picking apart what they said in their episode because it is like Chris said, pretty basic stuff that I heard growing up my whole life.
So and we just we need a break after last episode and responding. Yes, please. Let's just give our ideas on things, not just responses to their ideas.
It was a lot. So responding to the first question. So if there's no marriage in heaven, what's the point?
So they did mention in their episode like this kind of idea that this question inherently is making the assumption that for something to be of value, it has to be eternal, which can be problematic.
Considering in my perspective, eternity isn't really we shouldn't be thinking in the sense of eternity because that's a concept that we can't even understand anyway.
So we should just stick to what we can grasp, what we can what we can understand.
So there's a lot of things that I'm sure can have value, but are fleeting. And I'd say marriage can be considered one of those things.
Of course, there's I've my view on marriage has changed over the past few years since I got married, which is fun.
I like to think of two different types of like marriage.
Like, I don't think you have to be legally married.
Honestly, it might be better not to be legally married as a lot of the benefits that used to be part of that are not there anymore.
We literally have friends that they have been engaged for years because it would screw up their taxes if they got married.
Like, you think that getting married should like give you better benefits like tax wise and just like family wise.
But apparently it's not like that anymore.
So it's just a label. Really. It's just to be recognized in the government's eyes.
And you don't necessarily need that. So I'd say like, I also have friends that they got legally married on one day and had their ceremony on another day.
And they still consider their anniversary the ceremony day like that was their real marriage day, not when the government recognized it.
And that's why I think that's like a different marriage is like when both people make the commitment, they don't necessarily need it in like a contractual form.
We don't need like papers signed and shit to say that two people are committed to each other.
That's between them anyways. Yeah, yeah.
So marriage is an interesting concept because it's changed drastically throughout human history.
And I think it's funny. I think it's interesting because in the normal cookie cutter or Christian response,
like they get the concept of marriage from Genesis one and two of like God made man and then through him, through the man, he made a woman.
And like it's just and so they get this concept of marriage from Genesis one and two where God made man and then saw that he was alone and made a woman.
So first off, they take this like mythological account of a creation story and they make it factual and like real.
And then so they believe in a literal Adam and Eve and then through that marriage was formed.
And so they get a couple beliefs out of this that that concept is used in recent ish history.
When I say that, I mean like the past two thousand years, but mostly even before that probably is a similar concepts are used to strip women of rights.
And marriage has been used before to be a patriarchal system used to oppress women throughout our history, our short history.
And it's just kind of weird.
Like I feel like a lot of Christians have maybe not out loud moved on from the literal account of Adam and Eve,
but it feels kind of like that's an older concept that needs to get thrown out.
Yeah, using that to justify marriage being sacred in the eyes of God.
It's not really marriage in the first place.
And then like they're just they were even if you take it seriously and literal, they were made for each other.
And like, is that really a marriage if they didn't have any of the ceremony stuff that the church also believes you need like you need a witness.
So you get a witness through like a pastor or someone else ordained by a church and stuff like that.
It's just kind of weird.
And like the history of marriage is like so like if you read the Wikipedia, like it hasn't been a concept of like soulmates and love and like committed relationships and stuff like that until kind of recent.
So it's not that this is like a sacred institution for the church.
Like it was created that way in the Council of which one.
Yeah, not man.
It's gone.
I lost it.
Where to go Trent and I see you.
Which one I think it was where to go.
Oh, it's gone.
Real quick.
I made a hiding spot.
I made a hiding spot for the cat and as a coach just went into it for the first time.
That was adorable.
Nice.
That's fantastic.
Is it just like blankets and stuff?
We had a giant cardboard box from some big deal.
I got a sound bar like a 2.1 sound system and I took that box and made it this just like big little alcove under my desk because I have I took Natalie's desk now because she never uses it.
So it's an L and I put it under the side that my feet don't go under and it's just like a big box.
I put one of the beds in there and then just a little like door like a tiny little door for them to like just go into the cardboard box and there's a bed in there.
That's fantastic.
And she just went in there.
I made my own little door so I can open it up and peek inside.
That's so exciting.
She just went in and out again.
Oh my God.
So cute.
I made it for Kiri because I thought she would want to use it.
I'm surprised Nezuko does.
She's usually the one that's always out in the open the Dom and Kiri hides.
All right.
It was the Council of Trine.
That was the first known decrees on marriage.
All right.
So modern Christianity bases its views on marriage besides the Genesis part on things Jesus and Paul said to unmarried men, which is odd, but whatever.
And the first known decrees on marriage were during the Council of Trent in 1563.
And that made the validity of marriage dependent on the wedding occurring in the presence of a priest and two witnesses.
And like it's just because it's just weird.
Like I don't I don't really see marriage as a religious thing.
Like marriage is like a state thing.
You get benefits from being married from the state, not really from whatever religion you are.
And it's just odd that it's still seen as a religious thing.
Like what I mean is it's evolved from being something that people do to keep power.
And I was reading that 80 percent of like it's calculated that 80 percent of all marriages in humanity were between first cousins.
Like and like stuff like that that's made marriage really weird and like power dominant and things like that.
And then it gets kind of converted into a religious thing and then gets a becoming a really religious thing.
And then now it's a state thing and state in the sense of like a nation state, not state as in like American view of states.
And I mean, I think as like my views have evolved, my views on marriage have evolved as well.
And like I don't see why the state's involved in this.
This should I mean all the benefits you get from marriage should just be like cohabitation things and then just remove the legal sense out of it all.
And just like if you are cohabitating and in a relationship, you can get these benefits and just like yeah.
But then leave it up to that.
Then lawyers can't make their money on divorces.
Yeah.
Got to get that divorce money. That's really what I think marriage is for statewide.
Like they want people to get married so that they can get divorced later and make money off of it.
It's stupid. It costs nothing to get married, but it costs a lot to get divorced.
Yeah. I mean, the point for states to do it is so there's legal protections in the case of divorce.
So someone doesn't get screwed over by another person.
But unfortunately, our legal system is adversarial and so it's inherently setting two people up as adversaries trying to win from each other and gets it messy and awful.
And it's pretty unfortunate.
But if some of these systems were easier and the benefits were easier and updated and worked every time, then like definitely updated because your friend isn't the only person I've heard that like because marriage is supposed to help with taxes.
Because you can average your income between the two of you to get an average rate.
And so if there is one partner with a higher income, like a significantly higher income, it averages out to become a lower rate and you get tax benefits out from that.
But it doesn't always work that way, unfortunately.
And even if you file separately, there's still things that don't get filed separately and makes it still a mess.
So it's just it's an old institution that's kind of weird. And, you know, it's just wrapped up and a lot of bullshit, really.
Yeah. And the biggest thing it's wrapped up in the church was always like, if I heard anything about marriage, it would be like you can have sex while you're married.
Like, that's the biggest thing. At least that was on my mind thinking about marriage growing up.
Like, there's so many people that I feel like I see a lot of religious, like Christian people getting married way earlier than non-Christian people.
And I'm inclined to believe that it is to just be able to have sex because they believe they are not allowed to until they are married.
And I think that is messed up because that's just going to lead to a lot of issues.
There's going to be a lot of immature people getting married and then maturing and realizing they don't work together.
Yeah. So there's yeah. Yeah. I'm glad you brought this up. So there's an interesting phenomenon.
I don't feel like there's enough research on it because mostly people don't care, which is fair.
I feel like I just hyper-focus on this. But so it is a trend that Christian couples get married like significantly younger than other religious or non-religious couples,
which is interesting because the divorce rate for Christian couples is significantly higher as well.
And I would also be inclined to believe it's because of immaturity and instability in a relationship that wasn't taken care of pre-marriage.
And yeah, so I got married pretty young. I also got married very young and we both got married to our high school sweethearts. How cute.
Yeah. So the divorce rate is about 50 percent. So one of us is going to get divorced.
Well, it's you. I'm just kidding. That's not how statistics work. I know how statistics work. Please don't email me.
Statistically, one of us is going to get divorced.
No, you can't take a national average and put it onto two different people.
And I feel like we're on the side that, yeah, we were young when we got married, but maybe due to trauma or something else, we were matured fast.
Had to grow up quickly in some situations where by the time we did get married, even though we were young,
we were having big abstract thoughts and the capabilities to be, I don't know, just to think through things and think of possibilities and whatnot, just to be able to think well.
I think that helps, whereas some people want to get married and it's for silly reasons, I guess, just because they want to.
They have the feeling that they want to and so they do it.
Whereas I feel like we're all kind of the type of people that know what we're getting ourselves into and know that marriage wouldn't be some easy task or some just like,
oh, I'm going to get married and it's going to be just perfect type of thing. We would be the type to know, okay, we're getting into a commitment that we are wanting to last our lifetimes
and that's going to involve a lot of challenges along the way.
And we're willing to go into it knowing that and willing to work through it.
Whereas some people really romanticize marriage when it is very different from dating.
Like there are, especially as a young person, like there's so many different hormones and stuff going on.
And it's a whole different game when you're first meeting someone, first getting to know someone versus when you've known a person for a long time.
Yeah, yeah. I think you made a couple good points there.
I think we were raised in a way where we had the freedom to think and question and explore and I think that helps a lot with growing.
I think the other thing is bringing up hormones. I think that is also a good point and something that the church uses, I don't want to talk about purity culture too much because that's...
Oh, no, we don't have to get into that. That wasn't brought up in this episode anyways.
Yeah, no, no. Surprisingly it wasn't.
I know.
But I just want to bring up one point and it was just, I mean, just purity culture as a concept being preached and thrown at teenagers like a lot and ignoring a lot of research about it and a lot of research about growing up and maturing and hormones and just being scared to talk about sex and safe sex and all of this other stuff.
Leads into this really weird place and I feel like teenagers go one of two ways.
Like they really believe in the saving sex before marriage, which is obviously a valid choice for people.
I don't want to preach against that or anything like that, but just making that the only option and really preaching that.
You either get people that wholeheartedly believe it and people that go the opposite way, but the people that go the opposite way don't have the techniques that we know that work to make things safer for everyone involved or they haven't been taught other things that help and it just causes a mess that way.
Or people believe in it, get married younger because of their hormones, they don't realize everything else that comes with being in a partnership.
And I think there's also if you start to trace through the concepts of complementarianism versus egalitarianism, which is just a view on manhood versus womanhood and if people are equal.
I mean, honestly, it's the debate whether if...
It's just so funny because it's just arguing where women are equal to men.
Yes, it is. It's so annoying.
But they'll say and they'll claim that in both women are equal, but they have a different role.
That's what I grew up hearing all the time. A man has a role, a woman has a role, and you have to fit into those roles.
So they complement each other.
Yeah, and it's just silly.
So that's all I always remember is they complement each other versus they are actually equal.
And I think having power dynamic relationship balance like being a complementarianist is likely to lead to internal strife and external strife later as people mature and become their own people if they get married younger as well.
I feel like if you get married younger, you have the world. I don't know for us or for me at least the world made a lot of sense. It was black and white. And then I started to not be 18 anymore.
And well, like 18 and a half, but I started to not be a teenager and started to understand that the world is very gray and there's a lot more nuance.
And then once you start learning about nuance, I feel like that's when you start to become who you are and start to figure yourself out.
And if you aren't on the same page as people as two people being partners versus complementing each other, but having different roles when the harsh reality of the world comes into play, it seems to cause a lot of strife and relationships.
If that makes any sense at all.
I would agree. Yeah, I've gotten out of that mindset of the whole complementarianism stuff because that was rough for me.
That gave me a lot of anxiety about what my role is supposed to be.
The whole provider thing. I have to provide for my family, which yeah, I'm going to help provide.
But it's like both of us are working together. Not even Natalie's the breadwinner really.
She's the one bringing in the bigger bucks. And the younger me probably would have been upset by that, I would think, just because of the way I was raised.
But I am completely fine with it at this point.
It's like both of us are working together to pay the bills, but we're also working together to get our own like fun money.
It's just like it's a partnership. It's not a one person provides everything and the other person provides housework.
I don't know. I had that idea in my head growing up a lot of the man goes to work, makes the money and the woman, she can't go make money, but it's always going to be lesser than which I mean, we don't have to get into that whole topic of pay gap.
That's a couple other topics really.
But I had that idea like the man brings in the main provisions he's supposed to bring in the main provisions and the wife is like the supporting role.
There's a main role and a supporting role. It's not like complementing each other. It was like the man is the main role.
The woman supports the man in the main role. And that's just not a great mindset to have.
And that brings up even the whole concept of our favorite single man, Mr. Paul, where like the women woman needs to submit to man kind of concept to of like, there's something troubling texts in the Bible.
Like, I have just a very distinct memory of someone telling me that someone a very strong independent woman telling me that like God has told her that sometimes she needs to submit to her partner.
And even if she thinks that he's wrong, that she still needs to submit to him and that it's something she struggles with, but she's getting better.
And someone told me that like 15 and it's stuck with me ever since.
And I'm now realizing after talking this through that I've been an egalitarian ever since that moment.
Honestly, like that's pretty much when I threw out the whole antiquated idea of a I like how you said that a supporting role and like a main role.
And I do not like that concept.
And it's fine if that's how your relationship ends up. It's just fighting for everyone to freely make that decision for themselves without getting pressured into it by anyone.
Right.
Like if your relationship ends up being like the head of the household is one gender, the standard gender role and the supporting role is the other.
That's normal gender role.
That's fine as long as everyone made that decision and it's happy with that decision and wasn't pressured into it.
Like, you know, consent is just a nice thing.
So but there's people that don't want to be that way and they want to be a different way and creating the space for by removing toxic theology like that.
It creates a space for everyone to build their relationships consensually how they want basically.
So which is nice.
Yeah, I would agree.
It's just like I was thinking about this the other day and it's like I had this realization before, but I just think it's funny to think about.
Like, so when you get married, there's typically one person that changes their name.
And I started to think like, what is the point of that?
Why not just keep the name you've had your entire life?
Like, but then you think about it.
It's like, oh, it's because the woman was once her father's property and had his little label on her.
And now she is the husband's property and has his label.
Like, it's not the woman's name.
It's always like a man's name that gets labeled onto a woman, which like nowadays I wouldn't say people think of it that way.
But I feel like that has to be the origin of this whole changing your name to like usually the husband's last name.
Yeah. And even if people don't think about it that way, it's still I mean, it gives that vibe like it really does.
Yeah. You can you can have like unity between the two of you without having the same last name.
Yeah, it doesn't that doesn't change anything to change your name.
It's much more of a hassle, actually.
Just know that there's a bunch of hoops and a bunch of things you have to do to change your last name.
So think about it, which is surprising because so many people do it.
Right. Like, and it's such a pain.
There are businesses set upon helping people change their last name after they get married.
Like people have built businesses on that. It's silly.
So I guess we never actually said the point of marriage, which in my mind, the point of marriage is what you make it.
Like some people can get married if they want to, some don't.
And I think their relationships are both just as valid as the other.
Like, I know people that probably are never going to get married, but they're living with their significant other as if they were.
And I see no problems with that.
Like you don't need this label. If two people are committed enough to each other, you don't need some binding contract to hold them to it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Like if we take the concept of marriage and strip out all the, you know, needing a priest or judge to be there and witness it and get rid of all the state protection that you get from marriage.
Like the concept of it is just two people building a family, which brings up another thing of the church defining family as you have to have children.
And I don't like that. And it kind of pisses me off a lot.
And like two people living together, building a life together and unity is also a family.
You don't have to be married to be a family, like legally married to be a family.
You don't have to have a kid to be a real family either.
Also, my two cats are children and there's four of us.
So we are a family of four.
They are my babies. I talk to them, my little babies every day.
You've turned into such a cat dad so quickly. It's very funny.
Well, I never owned pets growing up. So like the last pet I had was when I was like three or four years old before we had to give her away because we weren't able to take care of her well enough.
And then we never really had pets from then on. And so these are my first pets.
And I'm finding after having gotten cats and seen like, I feel like I got lucky too.
But these two cats that we got are some of the easiest cats to take care of.
Like they are they adapted pretty quickly.
Like one of them is like still an anxious little fur ball.
But like they're still they both just ended up getting along with us really well.
They didn't really have any like shelter trauma or anything.
So they were just really trusting from the get go.
And it was just easy. And then I hear about other people having gotten a dog and how they are exhausted having to take care of the dog all the time.
So kind of happy with my choice. And now I'm like to the point where it's I'm probably only me and Ellie talked about it.
We're probably only going to own cats and we're just going to go like if we want to pet a dog, we just go to our friends with dogs.
That way it's like the people that live vicariously through other people having children like I'll just get to watch my nieces and nephews grow up.
But I'm probably not going to have any of my own. I'll just get to see the good parts of all of it and never have to experience the bad ones.
Yep. Same here. Same here. Exactly. I get to spoil my nieces and nephews. And it's great.
And pet other people's dogs. Yeah. Yeah. You got some easy cats.
Yeah, we did. They adapted so well. That was really nice.
Oh, yeah. They are both very lovey dovey too sometimes. Like we'll just sit on the couch and I'll have either Kyrie or Nezuko.
They just hop up and come lay on your lap and they sit there. It's just all the time too.
Like every day you just have to sit on the couch and if you wait long enough, they'll just pop up there and sit on your lap and they love it. Nezuko loves it.
I've seen pictures. They are adorable.
I send them a lot because it happens so often. And then we're starting to realize like what each one likes individually like when we pet them.
I love them. They're great. And we've had them for a few months now. So it's going to be rough when they die.
Oh, don't bring that up. No, we don't think about that ever. Doesn't happen.
So you can't really we talked to the vet because we wanted to know their ages because we don't really know.
But apparently you can't tell a cat's age until like 10 or 11 ish because their eyes start getting like cloudier at that point in time.
So until then, you won't know how old they actually are. So like Nezuko, sometimes she acts like an old woman like with joint pain.
We even got joint supplements for her because she just seemed like sometimes she's in pain hopping up on the thing.
She makes little like meow cries every time she jumps up on something and she like she would take forever to even like motivate herself to jump.
Like you'd see her sitting looking at where she wanted to jump and kind of like squirming a little bit like pumping herself up to actually jump up.
And it would take forever. And now we got her some joint supplements and she's actually just like moving around a lot better.
So we're thinking she may be an older lady. I'm glad the supplements help.
Yeah, that's nice. Cats in pain, man. Gets me. Well, animals in pain. Also humans in pain. Pain just gets me.
We've somewhat answered the first question. My answer is not a definitive one because that kind of relates my worldview on things too.
But basically the point of marriage is what you make of it. You are the one that gives things meaning.
Things I this is completely my perspective, but I don't think a lot of things have inherent meaning.
Meaning only comes by giving it meaning. And so if you don't find meaning in marriage, maybe it's not for you.
But if you can find meaning in marriage, then go for it. It's really person by person based.
There's not going to be one mold that fits everyone. So yeah, the point is what you make of it.
That's my answer for the first one. That's it. That's such a good point.
I love that the way you phrase that is like there's not a mold that fits everyone and it feels like marriage has been used as a way to say like a man and woman get married and have a bunch of children.
And that's not what relationships look like for everyone. Some people just want to don't want the legal pressure or to uphold a historical patriarchal system.
And so they just do cohabitation. And I just I saw the other day I was reading just some history and I saw Australia actually has protections you can get that's a little bit less strict than the normal legal marriage protections.
But being cohabitators in a relationship, you do get a certain percentage of legal protections and benefits.
That was good. But some people just don't want to uphold the system. Some people feel some people have gone through just unbelievably disgusting divorces or had awful relationships and don't feel like getting married and being bound down in a legal contract again is a good idea.
And they don't feel great about it. So they just cohabitate and they're fine. Their relationships great like and that's okay too. Some people just don't want to be in a relationship at all. And that's okay too.
There's just not a mold that fits everyone. And I really like how you said that. It just made me think about that and how a lot of things are trying to be the perfect mold of how to be a human and like being a human is kind of messy.
And like we don't need to have so many boxes to put people in. We can put people in their own individual boxes.
I feel like when we make like fewer molds that you like either have to fit into one of these, it really causes a lot of comparison as well.
Like you will compare yourself to these other ways of doing things. Whereas ideally you figure out what's best for you and you're okay with that because that works for you.
It may not be what this other person is doing or this other person is doing but do what works for you and for your happiness.
It doesn't matter how other people are doing it. But when you have these molds and you're always comparing like, oh, my marriage has to be like this or like this.
I feel like that's where problems can arise when you're always in a comparison mode. Whereas if you just figure it out for yourself, just see what makes you happy.
Yeah. See what works for you and do that. Anyways, moving on to the second question. Yeah. Ideal dating age from our perspective.
What do you think? It's funny because I was probably recording somewhere.
I actually did when I was a senior in high school. So I was the class chaplain for like three, maybe four, maybe all four years.
I think it was three years though. I was the class chaplain and at one point, D came up to me randomly during a class and was like, hey, I need you to do the middle school chapel with me.
And it was just a Q&A chapel. And so I went up there on stage with him and answered questions.
And one of these questions I answered was basically this of like, should you date in high school or not?
And so I gave a lenient answer of it's probably not best to date that young because back then I still, it would have been right before I started digging into like the concept of marriage and like stuff like that.
But I said and dating and purity culture would have been right before that. But I started thinking about that more in my faith.
There was a couple other theological pillars that I'd already knocked down, but secretly so no one knew about it because Lakewood wasn't a great place to have these thoughts.
And it was like three weeks from graduation or something. So it's like almost out of it.
But because I said that it probably wasn't the best thing to do to date in high school. You should focus on your classes.
And because I still have the concept of like it's harder to stay pure if you're dating in high school because of hormones.
And also you should be dating for marriage and realistically you shouldn't get married directly out of high school.
I have that little bit of common sense. You shouldn't get married directly out of high school.
But like even then it's everyone else's relationship, not mine. But for some people it works. Yeah.
For some people it works. For some people it's a nightmare.
I feel like that there's a couple of concepts we deconstruct as a society, then it might be easier for people to do that.
But right now, not a big fan of people getting married super young. I don't think there's a need for it.
And where's it going? Oh, so I said probably don't date in high school, which was funny because I was dating in high school.
And one of the kids brought that up and I just like brushed it off and said that you're right.
We did a lot of praying about it and we thought that our relationship would be better if we were dating or something like that.
Definitely brought up that we prayed about it because that's like the trump card every time.
As long as you pray about it, then it's fine.
Which is a funny memory to think back on and it pops into my head every couple years and it popped into my head when I listened to this episode.
Anyway, but now I would answer that question with you should think hard about the concepts you're bringing into a relationship.
And your theological concepts you're bringing in and just your reality in general of like think long and hard about that.
But I think high school is a time to learn who you are, right?
High school through college, kind of figure out who you are as a person, who you are as a person and to just experiment and get the most out of life.
So I mean, as long as there's no crazy power dynamics in place and like abuse and stuff, I think it's probably fine to date in high school.
Gotcha. Yeah, for me, I can't give an ideal dating age because it varies for everyone, right?
So it's more about being honest with yourself with dating.
So I'm not under the impression like the Christian community is about dating is for marriage.
I'm not under that impression anymore.
There's a lot to gain from dating, like different perspectives and whatnot.
It's like learning to be social and different.
So like I feel like I may have missed out on some socializing just because I've dated the same person my whole life and dates are very different when you've known the person for many years.
So I never had those like awkward first dates or anything, because like Natalie and I were like kind of together before we could even go on dates.
Like I kind of like how my mom had put it like we weren't allowed to date until we could drive them to the dates.
That's like what Jed had said.
And I like that one too.
Like if you can't drive to your own dates, maybe you don't go on it.
But I think you could still be younger than that.
Anyways, I'm just saying like before I could drive, we weren't really going on dates.
So it wasn't dating if you're not going on dates.
So like when I like Natalie and I had said we were like boyfriend and girlfriend before we would even go on dates or anything.
And my dad, like my parents had found out about it because of course my mom was Snoopy and read my my diary trauma.
But she was like, oh, it's fine.
He just has like a girlfriend.
They're not dating type of deal.
Like it's fine to have a girlfriend.
They're not dating because they're not going on dates type of idea.
So like there's I don't know.
It's complicated.
You really would just have to be honest with yourself and understand that by dating another person is involved like they are their own person.
You need to understand that they are a person.
You can't be using this other person for your own benefit.
A lot of people will see dating as how they can benefit from it.
But a lot of what goes into dating and relationships is how you can serve this other person and maybe not get anything out of it.
It's not a logical thing, honestly, like relationships and whatnot, because the ideal ones like the ones that work are when you're not focused on what you're getting, you're focused on what you can do.
And if both people are on board with that mindset, then it works.
The power dynamics come when both people are not on board with that same mindset.
So you really have to be careful.
You don't you don't want to be hurting other people for your own gain.
That is not a good look.
So if you think that you are mature enough to be able to have a relationship with another person, then go for it.
Try it out.
Just don't be thinking about what you can get out of it.
I like our answers to both of these questions were just like no rule kind of thing of like just be a good human and be careful.
And power dynamics are crazy.
So watch out for those.
But I feel like that's the best I would be probably the most lax parent if I were to ever be one, maybe not the most.
There's definitely more like people, but I would be the kind that I would just like ask questions, not really set many rules, let people learn for themselves.
Like there's a lot of lessons to learn there.
If you're not allowed to do something, you're not going to learn anything from those experiences you're not having.
So I'm all for having different experiences in order to have the mindset of learning from those and growing as a person.
Yes, yes, yeah, that's that's great.
Yeah, I think I would be the same way.
But raising another like being a human is complicated enough.
Like raising another one seems like more than I want to deal with.
Just be smart.
But I sure but I sure will stand on my podium over here and tell other parents that they suck.
Yeah, yeah, parents suck.
I'd say restricting people just isn't I've never seen that as the best way to go.
I've found that I've grown the most by having experiences myself and learning from them, like telling someone what they need to know without them actually learning it for themselves doesn't doesn't work.
Yeah, I was pretty.
So yeah, I wasn't raised with many rules or curfews or anything.
And I definitely benefited that from that.
But I was also a super anxious kid because of other things.
And so there was a lot of experiences that I feel like I missed out not missed out, but that I didn't even consider the potential of benefiting from because of the religious like moral framework I had.
And like I don't regret any choices I made, but it does.
It is an interesting thought experience to think back and be like, I wonder if I wasn't so anxious or raised this way how different things would have been different.
Yeah, who knows?
No one does.
I don't.
You'll never know.
I sure don't.
You just have what you have at this point and you got to make the most of it.
The more you like think of hypothetical like you can only think of hypothetical situations in a way just to be curious about something not actually invest a whole lot into those or else that'll lead to just depression.
Yeah, I mean, it's interesting because I never went on roller coasters until that one trip that are two separate schools before I went to Lakewood both went to Cedar Point.
And you were there and dragged me on the the ammonium force and I had a blast and now I'm just an adrenaline seeker and a bunch of different ways.
So, but it's interesting thinking back of like what roller coasters I missed going on because I was scared versus now where like I did the experience and now life's better.
Like it's just it's a thought experiment I have where it's like I wonder if my framework would have changed years earlier where that would have gotten me like not regretting where I am now because I feel like I'm in a great place now.
I feel like I'm lucky now.
Oh, yeah.
But it's like I wonder what differences would have given me if my moral framework shifted earlier or my religious framework.
That's not really moral.
If my religious framework shifted earlier and became more lenient and so now I'm more of an advocate of still having guardrails but make the guardrails more lenient and so people can pick their destinations of where they're going earlier in life.
Yeah.
Well, with that in conclusion, our answers are do what's right for you.
Just be honest with yourself and really.
Yeah, that's mainly it.
Just be honest with yourself and what you are making these decisions for.
Have good reasoning for everything.
You said that in a lot less words than it took us to get there.
Yeah, that's the gist of it.
That's the gist of just my worldview in general.
You can't learn from experiences you don't have.
So also with that you gotta be careful.
Yeah, I was gonna say.
Yeah, it's this whole idea of a balance, not like an absolute.
The more absolutes, like absolutes are on one end of a spectrum, whereas like nothing is at the other end and there's really a balance between the two.
So it's like have as many experiences as you can possibly have, but also be smart about which experiences you choose to have.
And I think we're good here.
Have a great night and we love you listener.
Bye bye.
Love you.