Alright. So, we we talked last time about the Trinity. We went pretty in depth on that and and now, we're going to talk about one of the implications of that doctrine because it does matter. It's not just, you know, the weird little checkbox that we all have in in a good Christian church. Do you you know, it's not, you know, it's not just a philosophical checkbox. It's a it's an important basis for so much of our other doctrine. I mean, it really comes out in whether or not Jesus was a valid sacrifice for us for one thing because if you dig deeply into his humanity, you have to ask questions like, If he can't sin at all, what's he really giving up? You know, I mean, is he, is that fair? You know, I mean, if somebody did sin, obviously that's not a good enough sacrifice to save us. You did need somebody sinless, but if it's God himself, it's like, I don't know, is that a good enough sacrifice? And that, you know, those things get answered as you go through trinity doctrines. And I'm not going to get into that one right now. That's a fun one though. It's called hypostatic evening, if you ever want to look it up. No, today I'm going to talk about the way that God imprinted himself, I would say, on the universe. When he designed the universe, and particularly when he designed human beings, he made it a bit like him. Not in the sense of being omnipotent, or omniscient, or any of those. You know what the omnis are, right? You know what that means? Everybody's an omni? Oh, good, okay. Not in that sense, but in the sense that we mirror some of his attributes, some of his characteristics. Sometimes in a fallen world, we don't mirror them all that well. You look at it and you're sort of like, well, I can see a hint of what it's supposed to be, but boy, this thing's messed up. So it's sort of like seeing a crashed car, really nice car, but it's been smashed to pieces. It got in between two semis. And, you know, you're like, well, yeah, I guess technically I could tell that was a 944, but it's not. Well, no, it's junk now. Yeah, that's that's really what the image of God kind of looks like in calling men. But he stamped his internal relationships on the universe in some way. see a lot of that in John because John talks a lot about Jesus being, you know, having a relationship with the father. He talks to him as if he's somebody else. He prays to him as if, you know, the father is not the same person that the son is and we believe he's not the same person. They're just both God. Oh, it's gonna be a dry day. Sorry. I'm gonna be like you last week and not be able to talk and everybody says, So let's get into the big ugly P word today, patriarchy. Everybody hates patriarchy, right? Terrible. What's patriarchy? Define it, somebody, anybody. And you could define either patriarchy in general or the patriarchy, the way the world calls it, or whatever. Just speak right up if you have any idea. You gotta hear about this all the time from some people. I mean, it's a buzzword. It's a buzzword. It's kind of falling into one. So what's in a buzzword form? Men. Men. They take over. Societal organization. Yeah. Oh, that's really good. You're heading my direction here. Yeah, yeah. Societal organization. One kind of societal organization. And that kind is what you were just saying. Moon, in charge. Again, you know what happens when men are in charge. You know, I mean, that's kind of, that's the implication. And I would say that that's true in a species sense. When mankind is in charge, absolutely. I agree because man's fallen. That happens. But, you know, no, there's a tendency, especially in our world in the state it's in right now, to, to blame males for everything, you know? And again, we share a lot of blame. Sometimes we are jerks. There's no question of it, you know? I mean, yeah, bad men do bad things and they just roll over everybody and that is absolutely true. And they're more capable of it than most people because they're men, you know? Upper body strength, ambition to do something. I mean, they've already got us all. Like I'm not one. Okay. Yeah, so, yeah, you're right, it has become a buzzword. I'm glad you mentioned that, yeah. Patriarchy in general would just be, like, what's the opposite of a patriarchy? Matriarchy. Matriarchy, which means? Women. Women are doing that, yeah. So when does that happen? I don't know, like the nuns. Nuns? Yeah, isn't there like a main nun and then all the other nuns follow the nun? No, I mean, you know, you're right in that, you know, they're, their little authority structure in a convent, in a particular convent, is all women, all the way to the top, but above her is every man in the hierarchy above her in Catholicism, which is, oh yeah, definitely, the local priest, the bishop, the archdiocese, the pope, you know, it goes up. I skipped a few, but yeah. I mean, well, then there's always a man in charge eventually, so then there's no such thing as matriarchy. No, I'm kidding. I'm kidding. Actually, that's not in my book. Well, you know, that a lot of people would then argue that. But, you know, what about, I mean, has matriarchy ever existed? Well, first of all, maybe we should turn to the animal world. What? Oh, what was that? Praying mantises? Praying mantises. She eats them. What about lions? Well, yeah, I mean, I don't know if I would necessarily call it matriarchy when in one couple the woman dominates the man. And praying mantises as a whole, they're not, they don't have herd instinct. You know, they're not, I don't think they travel in groups. Sure, that's what they do. Yeah, they sort of form around a female who, it's hard to say whether or not somebody's in charge of me and looking at her, because it's not like you can hear them barking orders. But honestly, they do seem to follow her around. I mean, she's defining sometimes the limits of the hunting ground. Interestingly enough, She doesn't really decide who's the alpha male and who isn't. What does decide that? Isn't there a fight? A fight between potential alpha males, you know? You know, the incumbent, the old guy, and the new young upstart who wants to take his spot. You know, but and she doesn't seem to have any I mean, it's just she she just sends up sort of going along with whatever happens It's like oh, yeah, you drove him out. I guess Yes, you're the man now All right, so, um Yeah, it's a little pieces of the matriarch in there they're not I mean, you know, it's just really sort of a ascended family really You know it's it's there's a few lines in there who are not genetically connected to everybody else could have big problems in the future But you know they sort of it's like there's a central family around that Queen and everybody else just sort of You know the Lions the other lines sort of come up become a part of things and then make it or don't You know, that's how genetics moves down the line in lions, and I guess it worked pretty well for them. You know, you don't hear much about lion mutants or anything. Yeah, so in a small scale, yeah, obviously it happens in the animal world. Where else? What else? Ants. Ants. Ants. I was hoping somebody would say ants. Because yeah, ants is a really obvious one. You have, I mean, who's the most important in the colony? The Queen, of course, yes. What does the Queen do? She just eats eggs all day. Largely. Anything else? So she's like Peg Bundy, she just sort of sits around and eats bonbons and has kids or what? Honestly, she doesn't do much more than that. She does secrete pheromones that cause things. You know, there's a ripple effect from her to the other ants. But interestingly enough, she does not make a lot of the decisions of the colony. That's not her job. It's the, what? Oh, wow. Oh, sorry, that's stuck on it. Right, ants. Yeah, worker ants, actually, decide when to move the colony, what its boundaries are, and when it's going to go. They're the ones out there. The scouts, basically, are the ones who say, yeah, we can't stay here. Get her out of that nest and let's go. Yeah. It largely like that, too. Yeah, yeah. Because again, the queen bee, she doesn't leave the comb unless it's time to migrate. And she doesn't migrate quickly. She's huge, too. Congratulations. But yeah, interestingly enough, she looks dominant to us because so many of the things she does impact her, or in this case, the hello. Yeah, they impact the herd, or not the herd. We don't have herds of bugs. What do we have? Colony. Colony. Yeah. Yeah, so they impact the colony. But it's sort of not like she's telling them what to do. She's telling them what she needs. And herd. Survival and thriving is a big priority for the colony because she's having all the babies, right? We're talking about bees or ants or something. And because that's very important. It's a nice colony here. It's like she's not really in charge of it. She's the heart of it that has to be protected and taken care of, oddly enough. And she's taken care of by, you know, hundreds or thousands of workers and drones and various, you know, traits. Yeah. Anything else? Any others? Actually, let's just flip over to human history. Matriarchies in human history. The woman's in charge. Her name slipped me, but in Egypt. Cleopatra. Cleopatra, yeah. Yeah, you know that is a funny one. She's a queen. Does she count? What? You're going so fast. What? She's a queen. Does she count? A queen is actually ruling. That would count, yes. I mean, if she's the central authority figure for the whole land, absolutely. That's a tough one for me. I don't know. I mean, knowing what I know about good fashion, it's like she's a political dealer. I mean, she's just constantly She's the one who winds up, you know, kind of playing both sides of this war with Rome and throwing her lot in with the loser, Marc Andini. You know, so, but, yeah, so it's, I guess she technically was the ruler. It was sort of matriarchal for a little time. It's interesting enough, though, that hierarchy doesn't really go below her. In all the families, women were in charge. You know, she is that, she's the sole female authority, and in every other strata of Egyptian society, in the two, three, 400 years leading up to Christ's birth, in every other strata of Egyptian society, it's men were in charge everywhere under her. So, it's like, yeah, it's a matriarchy in the sense that there is a woman ruling, but it's not a matriarchy in the sense that that's normal. or that follows, you know, it's not something that really, it doesn't really have a hierarchical impact, I guess you'd say, really. You know, all the women weren't supposed to be like Cleopatra. I don't think men would have been happy if they were, because Cleopatra was kind of a scanty. Anyway. But anything else in history? Similar to that, there's times in England when there are queens. Oh, golly, yeah, yeah. Elizabeth I, I mean, who can deny, you know, a virgin queen of England? Maybe. Nobody knows for sure. You hear things, but you know. Yeah, but she, you know, she never marries, doesn't have any royal offspring. And she rules, but once again, doesn't go below her level. It's still, you know, when the colonies are being formed in America, from England, who's running all of them? Men, men, men, men, men, men. Even, you know, even the secular ones like Jamestown. You know, the women are there, they're helping, can't really make it without them. But, you know, you almost never see women rising to the top of leadership unless went through, or the Native Americans came along and shot up everybody because they sold their land, which, yeah, that's legit. I can see them having a problem with that, absolutely. Anything else? Actually, there is one, but go ahead. Anybody? Candace, who are you named after? I don't know. Okay. Alright. Do you know the historical impact of your name? No. Oh, interesting. You might find this very interesting because the only matriarchy that survived for any length of time in history, I mean, multiple generations and sort of had an impact on the strata below it in terms of women being more in charge than men is Candace who was in Kush. That's sort of southern Egypt. Or part of Ethiopia now. Yeah, Candace, for a thousand years almost, I think, their society lasted and you know now the fact is she's always allied herself with men to do the work and you know even the hard work of government but she is the one who makes the decisions that is the only exception to the rule i found in history Unless there's some deep, dark, far eastern thing that I don't know about. Because honestly, I'm not all that great on South Pacific or Eastern Asian history. I need to get better, but who has the time? But that's one case. I mean, so there's one. My queen, congratulations. Your parents had high hopes for you, apparently. I hope you're accomplishing your goals. All right. But that's the exception. Honestly, there isn't another one in history. They're all men. It's always men running the play. What in the world? I would say the definition of patriarchy, at least the way most people in history would have said it, not necessarily in the Bonnejour version, but the idea is, and you can laugh about this or not, the idea is that older, wiser men, not wiser than women, but the older, wiser of the men, rule. And all of the rest submit to their authority. And it's a hierarchy of leaders and followers, leaders and followers, all the way down, The intermediate followers are usually themselves leaders of the next level and so on and so on and so forth and the pattern keeps re-emerging as you move. So and then they are typically married or allied closely to nurturers and base establishers. They're the center of the life of the Which again, that sounds like the Ant Queen and the Bee Queen. It sounds like a lot of these people. To be honest, Candace kind of has a leg in both worlds in her because she's definitely the base establisher of that kingdom in history. But whenever there's a war or fight, she's not out on the front with a chariot. Oh no. And that means that people, they talk about Candace of Ethiopia, but they don't actually, Think of her in terms of, she won that war. No, it's her general war. Anyway, so there is a hierarchy there. First of all, the idea of hierarchy at all. Anarchy, which a lot of people lately have gotten excited about again for some strange reason, but I think has to do with Bitcoin. Yeah, cryptocurrency. Anyway, no. There is a, yeah, there's a sort of a modern turn toward, you know, why don't you just leave us alone and we can do whatever we want? Why does it not work? Because people are evil. Oh, but if they're staying to themselves. you can't trust people who have no rules in their society not to decide that they also are not going to have any rules when they take over your society because honestly Yeah, that's the tendency of men. People are not basically good. I hope everybody got this out of their Bible reading at some point. People are not essentially down deep good people. People stink. People, you know, it's not just that they make mistakes. People are awful to each other. They sin. The wonder, and this is something everybody needs to always kind of keep in the back of their mind when they're thinking about almost anything. The wonder is not that Hitler's a rise. The wonder is that everybody isn't one. God is restraining sin in most people in most ways. He's the one, even when they're an unbeliever, he's the one who's holding all that stuff back and keeping it from just flooding the world, which is kind of literally didn't notice, you know, because that's a time when he did sort of let the constraints open And anything was happening, you know, angels are out here having kids, and it's just nuts in the world, you know? Everything's going crazy, seriously. And I do believe that. I'll talk to you if you want to hear about that. But, yeah. Okay, so. I keep getting lost here. Why do I keep getting lost? Oh, well. This idea of hierarchy, it's really kind of stamped itself. into the universe a little bit. You know, the animal kingdom works that way. Humans tend to work that way. I mean, you know, if you think that everybody can just be nice to each other and be respectful and have boundaries, well, you just haven't met the guy who doesn't believe in your boundaries yet. And when you do meet him, you're going to be in trouble if you're not ready for him. In some way. Whatever way that is. I personally don't own a firearm. So I'm not that guy exactly. I do believe in the right to firearms in the Constitution. But I'm not personally nuts about it. Not just because I couldn't even get a .22 Marley open. I have no upper body strength. Oh, no. I'm announcing my femininity. No, I'm not. All right. So God put a hierarchy into place according to the Bible, and it works as follows. It's fairly straightforward. There's civil authority. What do we mean by civil? Not polite, the other meaning of the word. Yeah, yeah, it's basically official government. It's, you know, the official standing government of any was the Roman Empire with Nero at the top. Yikes. In our day, the civil authority is the United States government, theoretically elected by us, and with currently President Joe Biden at the top. Yeah, so that's, and you know, Paul said that pray for your rulers, remember? So, you know, Paul is like, you know, you need to pray for those people. And in his day, you know, if you think, I don't think that means I have to pray for Biden, then I would want to point out to you that in Paul's day, that meant praying for Nero. Biden is weird sometimes and not always the greatest, but he has not been burning Christian torches at his garden parties. So, just so you know. So, yeah, God set up civil authority. He did. You can sort of derive it because he said a couple of times in Genesis that by, you know, if a man sheds another man's blood, then by man, that blood shall be shed. God is saying, the front thing, God's clearly pro-capital punishment, but we'll leave that for a moment. But it's saying that, okay, if you do something, I know, I know, I know. I'm sorry. If you do something wrong, you need to pay restitution for that in some way. You need to be punished. I mean, you know, killing a killer doesn't necessarily do anything for the victim, because they're dead. But there's two things it does do. It's a deterrent from anybody else who thinks they're going to kill somebody. it gives justice and we actually kind of like justice because that's one of those attributes of God that we're kind of all for, you know? Yeah, justice. Let's see here. So, God kind of called for civil authority and later on, he sets it up in his own, you know, chosen people of Israel. And again, he doesn't set it aside in the first century even when you know, and when history suddenly stops being all about Israel, Israel is a big player, but they're not necessarily the biggest thing going on, you know, from then on, because honestly, you know, God decided to let the Jews reject him and he took gospel to the Judas house for a while. We're still in that while. for us um so uh yeah god established this thing so civil authority is god at the top and his word is either with him or just beneath him however you want to look at it his word is how we find out what he wants now okay in the old days sometimes you have a prophet shall i can tell you or yeah like moses who you know explained all this stuff to everybody at some point in israel But you have prophets come along and say, oh, actually, this guy's the king. No, he's not the king anymore, this guy is now. So all day, you know. But now that we have a complete Word of God, God doesn't make himself known. His will and his authority known through what we would normally think of as prophets, like the Old Testament had, anymore. And there's not apostles, They're all dead because the apostles are the ones who saw him and got their authority directly from him. We don't have that either. Yeah, but we do have something. We establish our own civil authorities. And so whatever that looks like in any place, God is giving authority to the national government. The national government almost never can handle any sized nation at all, so they in turn delegate authority to lower governments. In our case, the state, the local city, the county, you know, whatever, the township if you have those, you know, whatever. And then under that, you know, theoretically there isn't a really I can't get my notes to do the right thing here. I don't know, that theoretically would be the end of civil authority, but the fact is, it still ends up going then from there to the heads of household, because they're responsible for things like, you know, paying the taxes. You know, people want to know who's the head of household. Why do they always want to know that? Because they want the money. That's the only reason anybody ever wants to know who the head of a household is, because we need to know who we can squeeze. So authority actually delegates all the way down to the level of families or individuals if they don't have a family. And then that means that from fathers, usually, if they're in charge of the family, it goes from them to everybody else in the family. And that's civil authority. But there's other kinds of authority too. When you grew up, who's in charge of your house? You can be honest. You know, I mean eat yourselves, you know, when you're five years old, did you run the place basically? Come on people. My dad. Oh, your dad? Yeah, yeah, I've met your dad. Your dad definitely ruled his house. Yeah, good question. Is that true for everybody here? Pretty much? I'm seeing a bunch of nods. Okay, well, a lot of people either didn't have a dad in the picture or mom pretty much dominated him. You know, what mom said really whacked. We joke about that stuff now. Oh, happy wife, happy life. You know, I mean, you know, you know, the man's in charge, but he better do what his wife wants. There's some truth to that, honestly. You know, she's usually smarter than you in certain ways, and it's a good thing to ask to talk to her, but God's thoughts about authority in the family is, again, God, then his word, then fathers, then their wives, the mothers, and then the children. So he definitely does not see mothers and fathers on the same level. He says fathers are in charge. What do you do when you've got the situation where the person in charge isn't necessarily the smartest person in the group? What? I was just like thinking about like back in the day when we had to do group projects And then like you just have to sit there and listen to the stupid person just ramble on You don't know what you're talking about, you don't know what you're doing, your slides are all wrong, your information is all wrong And then I have to sit there and fix it because the dumbest person Decided that they were gonna be in charge and then everybody just looks at them and then arguments start because they're wrong and they're in charge so it's like And educationally speaking, you don't usually want the dumbest person in the room in charge of that. I'll be honest, yeah, I agree with that, I do. But, you know, in a family, as in a government, the smart people aren't always good leaders, oddly enough. No, that's so true, they don't know how to talk to people at all. Right, yeah, I mean, you know, the leaders think that they're up on Mount Sinai, they've talked to the burning bush, and they know everything, and everybody should just listen to them, because we're clever! And it turns out they're terrible at it. They don't care about people. They don't know people. They don't want to shepherd them. They don't want to watch out for them. They don't know how to mount a defense for them. Because they're little ivory tower academics. Meet the Democratic Party, everybody. Sorry, I had to say that. Honestly, that's how they operate. Their biggest problem with the guy who's going to be president next time is that he sounds dumb. Yeah, he kind of does. I mean, I, you know, I cringe every time I see that. What did we do this time? You know, and you thought Kofifi was bad. You didn't remember that. Yeah, no. But honestly, I don't know. You know, the best leaders sometimes aren't the most intelligent. They need intelligence near them. They need to be counseled by intelligence. But intelligent people don't always have the gift of leadership. You can't make the smart people automatically be up front. Leadership means more than that. And it can't always be the strongest one either. That sounds good after you've thrown intelligence out the window, but obviously, mine doesn't make sense. I mean, we all kind of know that, right? You all didn't need the Magna Carta to explain this to you, I hope. If you don't know what the Magna Carta is, I don't know. We can do English history at some point, too. But yeah, so what you have to do if you're not the smartest person in the room, but you're the leader, you just have to be a really, really good leader, a consensus builder, someone who gathers the opinions of the people who would know and then makes the decision and is responsible to stick with it, but has enough humility to say, all right, I was goofy, let's do something else. You know, that's real leadership, honestly, I think. So that's in the family. Yeah, we're almost out of time here. So, and I'll just go through real quick. There's two other authority structures that God's sort of put into society. There's a religious authority over your life. Who's got that? Who do you answer to for your spiritual life? That's always safe, he's always at the, I hope he's at the top of every one of these little triangles here we're drawing, but anybody else? Anybody between him and us? The answer is no. We know that because, you know, Peter looked at the religious and civil governments of his time in Acts 4 and said, we must obey God rather than men. when they ordered him to do something that was against his mission from God, and it was against, you know, they usurped the authority that God had over them and said, no, we'll tell you, shut up about Jesus. And Peter's response is, ha ha, I'm sorry, but, you know, again, I'm on a mission from God. Of course, we're brothers. Anyway. and then we have the religious authority in a church. Now, is that the same as religious authority over your own spiritual life? Are you the one who's ultimately in charge of what you do in the church? Do you have to answer to anybody in the church? I know it's not me. Nobody answers to me. Yes or no or who? Hmm. What? I'll tell you enough. Maybe in our church a little bit but the fact is, we don't actually do leadership with biblical names for things. Um the deacons are not supposed to be rulers of any kind. We've kind of fallen into it in this church just because of history and stuff but the fact is, yeah, we get You know, the congregation can always overrule us. So, you know, in these weird congregational places, the congregation ultimately decides what's important, perhaps. And is that right? Is that a good thing? You know, if you have a million people in a group, and I don't know, I mean, are they smarter than one person? Are they better rulers than one person? You just can't answer that automatically. You don't know, you don't know. It varies. God did put a direct authority hierarchy into the church. Elders, which is not what deacons are, not in this church, I'm not an elder. We have one elder, who is he? Papa. Well, you know, not my papa, who? What's his name? Robert. Robert? Gotcha, not your dad. your grandfather, right? Pastor Bob Ignatius is the authority that God placed over this church. If he had more elders, and we think he should, but God hasn't given them to us for some reason, I'm really hoping in the next couple of years we pick up one or two more, but if God gave us more elders, then they would join with him and together they would all lead the church. Now, we're still congregational, But they're the ones basically, they're navigating, they're looking ahead, they're figuring out what's coming up. They're deciding sort of the vision for the church. And the congregation still votes on it with us because in the end, this has to do a little bit with our spiritual individuality, doesn't it? I mean, if you're gonna be here, we can't make you do anything. Being a member of our church doesn't mean that we get to hold a gun to your head or paddle you if you get mad or anything. You know, I can't tax you more heavily or make you tithe more if you, you know, don't do something. I don't know. You know, the authority is almost meaningless as far as the fist goes, as far as making you do something, enforcement. But we're supposed to submit to our elders because God just told us so. I mean, that's a rule in the New Testament. Submit to your elders. If you don't go to church, by the way, you can't keep that commandment. You are disobeying God because you don't have an elder. That's an important point to make. If you're not going to a church, you are sinning at least because of that. There's more reasons, but that's a big deal. You need his leadership because honestly, he's not supposed to be a ruler with a king. He's not a scepter holder, a crowned man. The pastor, pastor, that word comes from the word for shepherd, and that's what he is. He's responsible for you, and that means that sometimes, yeah, he will say, as a group, we're not doing this, we're doing that. You know, he's guarding the sheepfold. He's keeping you within the walls for your protection and for your good in the future. He's trying to keep the poisonous stuff doing that he can say that he you know about certain things I think he can make that distinction and he can say if you don't agree with me that doesn't mean you're not a brother in the Lord but it does mean you're kind of leaving us you know this is a this is a dividing wall we have to agree on some things we're really hardcore about some people really not you'd be surprised anyway so that's a Yeah. That's a religious authority in church largely. Yeah. I mean, the the he's a shepherd. We treat him like a shepherd. He's good about that stuff. Um in our case, he is. We got a good shepherd. Uh he's been working really hard and I would like him to have some backup. So, if anybody wants to be an elder and feel like you're called to it, let's talk. You know, because that's something you can grow into. You know, an angel doesn't come down and tell you It's just, you feel it, you know it, but it's only men. Because men are hierarchically the only people who can be in charge of a church. Because it's not about feminine characteristics. It's not about making a base. It's not about providing. It's not about even intelligently seeing from the side what's really going on. It's about leadership. It's about saying, this is the direction Let's go. That's what men do. Men are always like that. You know, this is not the big joke is with it in a marriage, you know, the woman is telling you all her problems, but not because she wants you to fix them. It's because she wants you to listen. But what does the man do almost? And he's like, what do you mean? I gave you so many solutions to this problem. Yeah, they're different, okay? They're really different. And when you need a solution, you gotta have a man in charge. But you know, sometimes, I don't know. Anyway, but the thing is, you don't want someone who just wants people to listen but who can't make a good decision, who can't make a decision and can't lead people, they can't be in charge. And generally speaking, God has made men in one way and women in another. They're different. And we as Christians are the only people who can ever make distinctions. We own it. We gotta go, people. But just remember that. We own distinctions. Nobody else knows how to make them. I will talk about that as much as anybody wants to because that is fascinating to me. That's what we're going to pick up next time.