Fatherhood

The following program is recorded content created by the Truth Network. TheSteveNobleShow.com. And now here's your host, Steve Noble. Steve. The most famous phrases in movies and I think, I think Steve will really appreciate this, the phrase, Luke, I am your father. Now, everyone, even people that haven't seen Star Wars knows that emotional.

Yeah, that's right. But it's important because today we're going to talk about fatherhood and how it affects us. Because show me the father is about fatherhood and it's a lot bigger than just a tradition we have in America.

It's bigger than just the way we like things to be as traditional people, but rather it's something that's quite eternal. So let me start out with a question for Rick. Rick, what drew you to a film about fatherhood? I would say about four years ago, I took a course called Sonship written by Jack Miller. He had gone to Uganda as a missionary and a lot of the missionaries there, when they came back, they were just burned out.

Uganda is hard. And he was realizing just how little they connected with God as father and what he called the term functional orphans. I go to church. I lead worship.

I'm a men's ministry leader or maybe a women's ministry leader or maybe a pastor of a church. But at the end of the day, you don't really believe God's your father. I can connect to God, Elohim, the big guy in the sky.

I can do that. But father is another thing altogether. And then if you come from a home where maybe perhaps the way I was disciplined, I was picked up sideways and thrown against the wall. So conflict doesn't really have a fun feel for you. And then putting the words perfect and father in the same sentence are very difficult. And so throughout your life, you're struggling with your faith and you don't know why.

You don't know what's going on. You feel disconnected from God. And so we wanted to make a film about what we think is the upstream issue to all of this, which is, you know, I can convince you that the New Testament documents are reliable all day long, but if you can't connect to God as father, none of that matters.

And so we just thought that was the upstream issue. Christians and non-Christians alike coming to terms with who God is as father and maybe dealing with that because we do project onto God these traits of our earthly dad. And so we'll struggle with God.

Let's say if our dad was a liar, we find it difficult to believe God is true. And we struggle with that, that He's good, that He's sovereign. I can believe He's good for you. I can pray for you, Steve, and believe God's going to be good for you. But for me, I don't know, maybe ought to do some self-sufficiency stuff here. So that was the motivation for me when Steven Kendrick asked me to do a doc for him.

And I said, this is what I think it needs to be. Well, and you were talking about how we project our earthly father onto the Father, which can be negative. Sometimes it could be positive. Steve, you always close your show with a quote from your father, right? Yeah. Ever forward.

Yeah. What was your father like? I didn't become a Christian until I was 28. And unlike a lot of people that I've met like Rick, I would not say that I have any significant father wounds. That does not mean I'm not inflicting father wounds on my own kids, because I definitely have done that.

But I do not have any significant negative memories of my dad growing up. The only thing I would say my dad was lacking was discipleship. So he would claim Christ, but we grew up going to kind of mushy churches. And that was not, make sure you pray before meal.

We go at Christmas and Easter as often as we can, but there was no discipleship there. But he was, my father was 14 during Pearl Harbor. So he was a member of the greatest generation. He went to Germany in the occupation.

He was finishing officer school right when the war ended. So he came out of that very pragmatic, business-minded generation. And that's how I was raised.

And if we weren't listening, then the answer was to raise your voice. So a very dogmatic, strong presence. My mother was a stay-at-home mom, but my dad, the one thing that I would say about my dad that has had the biggest impact on me my whole life, especially once I became a believer and when radio started was that my dad was an incredible encourager. So people at his 90th birthday party, pretty much everybody that spoke said the same thing.

When you talk to Fred Noble, he'll always make you feel like you're the only person in the room. Because my dad taught us another thing besides Ever Forward, which was restless curiosity. So when my dad would meet you, Rick, or he'd meet you guys, you rent in, my dad would ask you a thousand questions and he would be seriously interested in every one of them. He didn't do it as a sales guy. He didn't do it because it was good social graces. He did it because he was generally interested in you. And that I was being trained for radio without knowing I was being trained for radio.

So there, I mean, I could talk for hours, which I'm not going to, but yeah, that's my dad. And Ever Forward was just, you didn't get the date. You didn't get the grade. You didn't get the job. You lost the job. You messed this up.

You screwed that up. You talk it through and then Ever Forward, which is like a pat on the butt, pick you up off the field, send you back into the battle. You know, it's interesting. I was watching a video of Simon Sinek talking about this generation that's in the job market right now, the millennial generation and how having grit is something that they're lacking right now. That they think that trying and trying and trying has become, you know, is to them something like, well, I did it once and it was a terrible experience.

I haven't tried it twice. And that is a lot for them. The idea of going back and having more grit and more grit, how, how have you seen that in, played out in fatherhood? I mean, did you see that very much in your father, Rick? Rick's going to answer that question after the break.

That is excellent. I need some time to think. Yeah. Right. Yeah.

We'll give you the break to think that over four, three. We'll see you right back. Excellent. Perfect. Welcome back to the Steve Noble show.

We are talking about fatherhood today. We have a special guest, Steve Noble. Oh yeah. And Rick Altizer.

And I think you got that order wrong. And so we are talking to Rick Altizer about fatherhood because he is the director of the movie. Show me the father. And we during the break, we're talking about how our fathers have influenced us, even as how we become, you know, good workers or, you know, people that aren't lazy and things like that. But, you know, right now, if you go to conservative radio, you're going to hear a lot of people talk about how important fatherhood is. You don't have to be a Christian. You can be a conservative Republican atheist and understand that fatherhood is important for the furthering of our, of our country, of our society, of culture and all that sort of thing. But what, as a Christian, Rick what would make fatherhood so important? What makes it important? Well, the fact that it's the character of God, that Jesus referred to God as father. So it's a primary relationship. It existed in eternity, the father and the son. R.C. Sproul said, there's a study out. There was not a rabbi till the 12th century that referred to God in the first person as father.

You can't find it. Jesus was, you see a father in the Old Testament, but it's more of a metaphor for he's a father of the nation, but you don't see anyone personally addressing God as father till Jesus comes. That was radical. As a matter of fact, in John, they wanted to kill him because they thought he was being blaspheming by calling him father.

And that was a radical concept. Now we now in our culture today, you know, we've got the fatherhood of God, we're all God's children, our God's chilling, you know, and so it's common now, but it was very uncommon 2000 years ago. And when he taught us to pray and the first words out of his mouth, when he taught us how to pray, we're our father. That is so significant in how we approach God. So Jesus was giving us a new way to approach God. Not this distant being in this, you know, who maybe might let you get into heaven if you do enough good stuff, but a father, a loving father. And we've got great stories of the prodigal son and the father waiting and running and embracing. And so I think what makes it so important is that this is modeling what we see in scripture as the triune God. We have a father in the Trinity.

Yeah, that's right. Well, it sounds like you're what else? Well, another thing you're saying is that a lot of people have been getting what fatherhood is wrong.

They don't know what it is. We attribute it to biology, we might attribute it to some kind of relation. And this is one for either of you. How would we define fatherhood?

What would we say it is? Yeah, Steve. Well, it's interesting because Rick and I discovered that we had very different upbringings in terms of what our fathers were like and the impact they had on us. When you were talking Renton about what's the culture think about fatherhood for years, I've had a line where I always say, just because you're a good provider doesn't mean you're a good father.

And I think we've mixed that up. A good dad is kids get everything that they want to get everything that they need. And that's a good dad. When I think of fatherhood, I think of reflection.

And that's why when I got saved at 28 and shortly thereafter, we got pregnant and then we had Hayden, our oldest. And then all of a sudden I had the example of my earthly father, but then I had a new standard and a heavenly father who I was getting to know. And then it impregnated my job as a father with that kind of perspective.

Now I had a plumb line that was very different and much higher than my father's, which was intimidating. And now instead of forcefulness and the force of personality, what's the role of love and the scriptures and the Holy Spirit and fatherhood. So when I hear fatherhood now as a mature believer, to me, that's reflection. Am I reflecting well to my children who God is, which can be a nightmare because we're incapable of doing it perfectly, but yet you're aware of the standard. But for me, it's always, am I fathering my children the way that I've seen my heavenly father father me? And sometimes I do probably more often than not.

I don't. And I I've been thinking about this a lot too, because I think what is it that has driven our culture so hard against men? So hard against particularly fathers. I mean, if you look at TV and you see any commercial that has a father on it, he's a bumbling idiot, little overweight, doesn't understand what's happening, not not in the present moment, usually married to someone who is pretty, who does know what's going on. And this is what fatherhood has been accepted as.

We have things and I just I brought this up before on the show, so I don't think I'm stepping on toes. But there's a you know, we have man caves, right? Just in case you're afraid you're growing up too fast.

You can have a man cave with your own video games and TV and everything you had when you were 15. And eventually your wife will become your mom. And we have that for fathers now. And so it's like, when I think about why the world is so against fatherhood, I think that fatherhood must be something along the lines of authority that has intimate love for the one he has stretched out his arm his hand to, because, you know, we are adopted. We have been made children according to to john. And he has stretched out his hand to us. Not as, you know, not like the orphan Annie, where a rich, a rich, powerful man is trying to help someone who's pathetic and alone, but rather our actual father, who loves us.

Do you see? Do you see this in film and culture, Rick, where there seems to be a real hate for authority that seems to be bound up in our hate for God himself? Oh, yeah, I mean, you see that. I mean, hatred for God is is the natural human go to, you know, the Bible says that our flesh is at enmity with God. So that is actually most Christians, that's their struggle. So they hate God. They're just too self righteous to admit it.

That's their struggle is the hatred for God. Why would you let this happen? Why would you have me marry this person? Why would you just go down the list?

Why would you give me this dad? Why, why, why? It's just, at the end of the day, we're saying, you know, what's wrong with you, God? So I think coming from that, they're all believers. There's no atheists. Everyone knows God exists. We, you know, thank you.

We rarely hear another Christian. We all know, you know, we actively deny God, because we hate him. We have this this innate hatred of him. And it's and it's a struggle we all have in our flesh. So that's just so common and natural to see in how our culture today and movies are just reflecting the culture. That's it's just the movies today are just a reflection. There is an agenda, you know, there's definitely an agenda underneath that they know that there are people who have a something, a flag they want to wave, you know, let's say perhaps a rainbow flag or whatever color you want to make it, but they, they have definitely something they want away, but they know the power of film.

So they want to get in there and do that agenda. But you see natural that enmity with God, you see it, it's in the culture, it's everywhere. And so we don't want to believe in a God that defines me says who I am, I'm going to define who I am. I'm a I'm a dog. I'm a cat.

You know, I'm, I'm a whatever I want to say I am. Well, when we come back, we're going to talk about how our father earthly fathers has influenced our fatherhood. So when we come back, we'll talk about Rick Altizer, the director of show me the father with our guest, Rick, Steve Noble. And we are talking about fatherhood. And I have a question for Steve, which by the way, let me just chime in there.

Okay. Many of you probably know the movie show me the father. You might not know offense, you might not know Rick's name, but you know, the other two guys names, which is Steven and Alex Kendrick. So that's war room and courageous and fireproof and all that kind of stuff. So now people are probably like, Oh yeah, I've seen that one incredible movie show me the father. I'm so excited that I'm here and we're going to watch it and talk about it. But thank you for your work on that.

It's my pleasure. And by the way, is this not the first movie, the Kendrick brothers made that they did not direct? Yeah, it was, it was weird working with them because they upgrade it. Every movie they've ever made was directed by Alex Kendrick. So this was a, this was a new venture for them, something a little out of the box.

Yes. And and so it was great. You know, they love the Lord and we had good, uh, good, good, healthy discussions, some good, healthy communication there, alpha males. And, uh, and I did not know I was an alpha male. And I told my wife that I said, I didn't know I was an alphabet.

She goes, are you kidding me? Well, you are a male Rick. So I know that's a controversial statement to make what director means in my book. I know what a director means, you know, as far as I'm concerned, I just wasn't sure we were on the same, but, but we did get there and it was a great, awesome relationship, but yeah, working with him was, was very exciting and, you know, go figure directing a Kendrick brothers movie.

How does that happen? That's, that's the Lord. That was God. Well, it is my favorite Kendrick's brother movie.

And it was, um, it made a big impact on me and made a big impact even on my father who watched it with me. Um, which brings me to my next question. Um, how has your earthly father reflected or not reflected, um, the, the view of our true heavenly father. And that could be for Rick or Steve. Steve, you haven't answered one a little bit. I almost never stopped talking.

What are you talking about? Uh, I always knew that my dad was for me. He was always for me, even when he was torqued off at me and oftentimes for a good reason, that that's why the whole ever forward thing becomes this mantra because I always knew he was for me. Now, listen, when I got on the radio, he would listen every Saturday when I was on Saturdays. And then when I went daily, he listened almost all the time. And then I'd usually talk to him after a lot of those shows.

The first thing he would say is, uh, expletive. You talk too fast. And my dad, I think you listen too slowly, but whatever, that's fine. My dad politically was on the opposite end of the spectrum for me.

Really. That being said, he was so proud of me because I have the courage of my convictions. And I was trying to make a difference, even though he disagreed with my politics next to my bride. He was my number one encourager, even though I know I. Ticked them off most of the time with all my, so far to the right, I'm about to fall off the flat earth diatribe, but yet he was still for me. Wow.

Which was such a huge lesson because our four kids don't always do what we would like them to do. Yeah. But do they know that I'm still for them?

And this is where I'll beat myself up all night because I, I I'll generally tend to see what I haven't done well as opposed to what I have done well, but that was huge. He was always for me. God's always for me.

Yeah. That's not glossing over my sin, but he's always for me. Convicting because I know what it's like. I am so easily disappointed with everybody and I have so little grace for everybody except for myself. I'm very gracious to me. How could you not be? Well, thank you.

You're welcome. But yeah, I mean, I, I, I know exactly what you're saying, how amazing it would be, you know, to see someone like that. What about you, Rick? Well, my dad's still alive. So there's some things I don't really want to talk about in that range, but I will, I will say growing up, there was some difficulties there, but, but after the divorce and things happened, he's really turned and he's very sweet. He's very affirmative.

He tells me he loves me all the time and pets me on the back. So, you know, I do feel that sense of what you were saying. I noticed as you were sharing that, Steve, I noticed you were getting a little emotional talking about your dad and, you know, it is a topic that is very emotional when you talk about a dad. And it's either I loved him so much or I was wounded so much from him, you know, and so it's such an, a powerful relationship for us to, to deal with. And sometimes because of a painful relationship with a dad, we don't really navigate well with God as father.

And so we kind of tend to let that one just kind of slide and not really dig into that. And how do I relate to you as father? How do I relate to you God as my father?

And what does that mean? You know, and those are big questions that we all need to be addressing, but yeah, I have really, you know, with my sons wanted to model Christ and wanted to model the father. So when I became a dad, as I'm sure, you know, I started really looking up, okay, well, what kind of father was God, you know, and I wanted to just be, I wanted to model that. And how many times did I mess that one up? We don't have the time to go into it, you know, lots of times. Even common core math would come up with a big number, but I'm happy to say my two best friends are my sons.

You know, they're my best friends and we have, you know, we talk to each other all the time and that is such a blessing to have them say, my dad's my best friend. That's okay. I'm good. God take me now. That's it.

That's all I needed. Kind of application of what you said to the dads out there. It's never too late to start telling your kids you love them. It's never too late to start patting them on the back. It's never too late to give them a hug.

And that's because I can imagine how amazing that's been for you to watch that change in your dad. It's never too late. I often say nobody's too far gone for God, even a dead guy. So don't think that you might've missed the boat before.

That doesn't mean you have to miss the boat today. Yeah. Yeah. When I think of my father, I think, I think back of how absolutely chaotic I was as a son. I mean, there were two, I went through all, I went through so many phases. I was, there were, I went through phases where I thought, you know, where I was like, Christian music is bad and it's, it's dumb and rock music's awesome.

I went through several rock music's awesome and, or bad. And I just went back and forth and back and forth. I was this, I was that I w I took on all kinds of different identities not like people do today, but you know, I thought I was, you know, I just went through all these phases. And as I look back on how chaotic I was, how, how much fear that would instill in me as a father watching how insane I was. But my father was always steady with me. He would always tell me the truth. And he, I know he cared about our relationship, but he did care about me knowing the truth more than whether I was going to like him at the end of that conversation. And I find myself struggling over that because, you know, I pull my punches sometimes with my kids, even when it comes to truth, because I'm afraid of where they're going to be at the end of that conversation with me, especially when you have older kids, like I have a 22 year old and I think about how some of our conversations, how they might go a certain way. And what if he walks away?

What if he doesn't talk to me again? Do I have the guts to tell him the truth in love the way my father did for me? And so it is, it is a hard, it's hard to, to look when you have a good father to think, how can I be that way? And like what you said, Steve, then when you see the father in heaven, who's a perfect father, and that's really where your standard is, it becomes very sobering. Because we have, as a society come to think that fatherhood is incidentally here. And instead, it is here by by decree of reality itself.

And how do we, you know, picture that to the rest of the world? Do you think we're getting close on time when we come back? You got a minute now? Well, it's gonna take a minute to even ask the question. That's how big this question is.

Can we just hum for the next minute? Well, the question I want to get into is, have we failed in the church in fatherhood, where we, we even pull our punches when it comes to, you know, membership, and things like that? Do we really care about even being a member of a church to have that kind of authority put over us, let alone in the church? Are we, can we look around and see men who have fathered other men in the church, not just their own children, biological children? But do we look around our church and see men who are fathering that young man and that young man? Is this a failure in the church as well as a failure in our culture? So I want us to think about that, because it's kind of sobering. As we move, you know, from such a personal understanding to our local community, especially our church, how do we how do we deal with that? Yeah. Because I know it's going to be a little different in, you know, church governments, you have some church governments have elders, some have deacons.

But in the end, Titus two is clear. So, um, so we need to re discuss how that will work. And if we are failing or not, so when we come back, we'll talk about that. We are back with the Steve Noble show. We have lost Rick. Was it something we said it must have been?

What did you do? That's the that's the whole that's the whole, you know, current of the show. It's it's so controversial.

We drive people away. Our guests here. I mean, that's cool. I'm blaming the host.

Well, I mean, we are this show is banned from YouTube, is it not? Yes. Thank you.

Praise the Lord. Yeah. I just think I think you should say at the beginning of every show. I think you're right. Branding. Yeah, I'm with you.

I'm good with that. Well, we are talking about fatherhood. And we I promised that we would discuss the church. Have we been failing at fatherhood in the church? So Titus two tells us that the those who are elderly in the church should be mentoring. And if we can, if we can make some implications, fathering and mothering the younger in our church. First, let's ask, do you have you seen that as a pattern in the churches you've been to, Steve, or have you seen it in your own life in the churches I've attended for all these years?

I would say almost never. I had the professor of philosophy at Southeastern Baptist, where I got my master's degree. He called it in the church in terms of the Sunday school world, they called it age based apartheid. So you have the senior group here, then you have the people in their 60s here, and then you have the middle aged people here, and then you have 30s here, and then you have the young marrieds here, and then you have the kids down here. So you're completely ripping the model apart, where you've got all the people with the wisdom on one end of the hall, and all the people with energy but no wisdom on the other end of the hall, and never the two shall meet.

And so that was that that's obviously stuck. That was probably 15 years ago. I've never been in a church where that's been done well. There's people that serve in the youth ministry, there's people that teach the kids in Sunday school, but in terms of your average dad, your average man, mentoring anybody half their age, I've never seen it promoted well, I've never seen it done well. And then if you take single parenting into consideration, 42% of kids in America right now are growing up without a father in the home.

Once you get to the African American community, you're pushing 80 to 90% in many cases, depending on where you're at. But I think the church has failed miserably. But we are the church. So to a certain extent, I think we've allowed it to fail. And we like to think we can outsource everything to the church.

And that was never the plan. Well, let me ask you this. I mean, I can see that in our society, because you said a word that kind of caught my ear, which is you said you have the wisdom on one side and the kids with all the energy and the other. Isn't it true that kids or young people don't see older people as wise? I mean, we we have kind of redefined what what it means to be relevant. We've redefined what it means to be I don't know, I guess relevance the best word, but it and I think that has to do with how we deal with technology, right? If you can't if you can't work a phone, you're an idiot.

If you can't work a computer, you're an idiot. How could you possibly have wisdom in that case? Have you ever have you ever seen someone, at least in the church, take take the reins, and overcome that, that hill that that culture has put in front of between the young people and elderly people that say if they don't understand technology, if they're not current with everything, they're, they're irrelevant to you? Have you seen anyone like, take a leap over that over that boundary?

No, I haven't. I mean, so I mean, you teach young people, I teach young people. It's like, I'm not going to use myself as an example. But I don't often see older people. Now listen, kids thinking older people are not wise as a 5000 year old problem. Yeah, right.

Right. I was amazed by the time I turned 30, how much my parents had learned from when I was 20 to when they were 30. I'm like, did you guys go get an advanced degree? Like, all of a sudden, you seem to be making a lot of sense to me. And they weren't the ones that got wise.

I just started to understand that they actually had wisdom. I think we have a natural problem where young people, because of that journey, want to reject older people's opinion. That's, that's normal.

That's not an abnormal thing. But in the church, I think you have to, I think you kind of have to force the subject. And you have to bring them together to overcome the assumption that older people can't offer you anything because they haven't been your age in 50 years. So what do they know? Even with my own kids, when I start talking about, well, one of the things that your mom and I have more than you do, is wisdom. You cannot have as much wisdom as we do, because you haven't lived as long. And so they, our flesh and our sin nature pushes back against that.

That's where I would change my approach, which I didn't do years ago. And Jeff Myers at Summit Ministries talked about talking to an unbeliever instead of kind of being across the table from each other. Hey, let's, let's walk next to each other.

Cause we're both looking for truth. So let's go see if we can go find it together. I think when, like with my students, I tell them in US history, especially, I said, do you guys still have living grandparents?

Yes. Okay. As soon as you can just start asking them questions about what life was like when they were your age. Just start listening and you're going to find that there's a lot of diamonds there, but you don't know, cause you assume they know nothing or that they can't relate to you, but you're wrong because they were 16 once too.

And so go listen. You, you have to kind of force them into the room. Yeah, that's right.

Yeah. I know that the first time I saw it happen where I saw someone who is older seek out and break that barrier was a man who was in my church. His name is Dr. Forney and he broke the barrier to reach me.

But the way he did it was he was, he was not looking for the perfect person to mentor or even someone that's likable, but he looked for someone that was desperate. So when I had ended up at that church, I was at a place where I had just been awakened by the Lord. I had been a father and a husband for many years at that point. I think we were at, we've been married for eight years at that point. And my wife was in charge of the home and I was her son for all those years. And suddenly I realized this is an affront to God.

How do I become a good husband, a good father? And I was desperate. I didn't know. Yeah. I mean, you know, you know, all this stuff. I mean, I could take a quiz and the quiz, I would have got a hundred percent on the quiz, but then when I go home to my wife, how do I, how do I do that kind of work?

How do I understand how to even begin? I was desperate. And Dr. Forney recognized that in me, he recognized it because he listened. Yeah. And that was something you brought up, being able to listen to people and he listened to me and he heard the desperation, my voice, and it all started with, do you want to have, do you want to have breakfast with me on Monday? Do you want to have breakfast with me on Monday?

Changed my marriage. Not some formal proclamation sign here. Yeah. That's just relational discipleship. Yes. That's all that was.

I will mention this back to your question because I did see somebody do this. Right. And it was my dad. My dad became a mentor to middle schoolers in his eighties.

Wow. He just became, once he discovered the internet, he emailed us way too much garbage. But besides that, he started studying mentoring and he became fascinated with mentoring. And then he just reached out to the local middle school and he had a couple of sixth graders over the course of a couple of years that he mentored in his eighties. What was, I mean, if you could narrow it down, what was his secret to, for someone that old to be able to connect as kids that young? I think they probably knew that he actually cared.

That's interesting. So he listened like you were saying to get this old man in there and he's funny, he's charming, but I guarantee you those kids knew he was listening and they knew he cared. That's why I said what I said about his 90th birthday party. I have a friend, we haven't seen each other in years. When my dad died and we were conversing through Facebook, he's like, I still remember a conversation that I had with your dad and your parents' kitchen and it was like 25 years ago and what an impact that had on him. So again, if I listen to you, I'm building value into you. If all I do is talk to you, which I did too much of that as a father, then I'm telling you that your opinions and your feelings and stuff don't really matter.

What matters in this conversation is me, which is problematic. That's right. Well, when we were talking before, you had said that you had a book that really influenced you. What was that book? Oh, The Kossa Discipleship by Bonhoeffer? The Spiritual Enema, which you're not supposed to say on Christian radio? And thank you for saying it. You're welcome.

Should I say it again? So the question I have for you is, if fatherhood isn't something limited to our biological children and should extend to those in the church, what did you learn from that book that would help listeners who want to be that father or even that mother in a church to help the younger? Well, yeah, that was the point before we went on the air that I was making about that book is it's so harsh, which is why I call it what I call it.

Grace got super-sized because Bonhoeffer was so straightforward about what the Kossa Discipleship should look like. I wasn't coming anywhere near to paying that price. And so it reduces you. And then I'm like, I'm just the biggest pile of scum on the planet, yet there's Christ dying for me on the cross. So grace expanded. And if I would change anything about my parenting as a father, it would be to more grace because mercy triumphs over judgment, more grace, which isn't leniency. So that's a whole nother conversation. But you're right. I mean, there's a sense where in good parenting and good fathering, you can have those really harsh moments, but those harsh moments usually are earned through very tender moments.

And when you start collecting tender moments where they really know you care, then those harsh moments become impactful and not more white noise to what has become there. Yeah. Yeah. So, okay. So let's wrap this up. You got 12 seconds. Well, I appreciate you being such a good guest on this show. Can you send us off with a good phrase from a wise man? And I think I'm gonna take it.