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You’re tired.
Not just physically; though yeah, that too.
You’re tired in your bones. In your soul.
Trying to be a steady husband, an intentional dad, a man of God… but deep down, you feel like you’re falling short. Like you’re carrying more than you know how to hold.
Dad Tired is a podcast for men who are ready to stop pretending and start healing.
Not with self-help tips or religious platitudes, but by anchoring their lives in something (and Someone) stronger.
Hosted by Jerrad Lopes, a husband, dad of four, and fellow struggler, this show is a weekly invitation to find rest for your soul, clarity for your calling, and the courage to lead your family well.
Through honest stories, biblical truth, and deep conversations you’ll be reminded:
You’re not alone. You’re not too far gone. And the man you want to be is only found in Jesus.
This isn’t about trying harder.
It’s about coming home.
Welcome back to another episode of q and a with Chris. Uh, if you are not familiar, you can submit a question anonymously by going to dad tire.com/question. And we will try to answer your question here it is your question that we're an asking on the show. Um, but my personal goal to make Chris Squirm, as always, we try, I want like the most crazy question to get Chris to feel awkward.
Um, so that's the goal. Well just ask whatever question you want. I. We don't have to necessarily, we don't have to necessarily take it as extreme as we want. Um, let's dive back in to today's questions. The Bible says that Cain and Abel had wives. Where did their wives come from? Were they either sisters?
Uh, someone in history had children via their sister.
Yes, that is true. That is where they came from. When Cain is marked by God to be protected from the city, the question is city of who's made up of the city. The two things we don't know is. Uh, we don't know how long the diff, the distance is between Adam and Eve falling, Adam and Eve going into the Garden of Eden and then falling, and how long it was between their fall and the birth of Canan and Abel.
So what we do know, you, you can look at timelines, you can look at the. Ages, and you can subtract and you can multiply those things or, or, uh, add those things together for sure. But what we don't know is we aren't given a clear history in terms of how did their family structure grow, grow. But if the question simply is, was it incest early on that began the human race?
The answer is yes. Now, if you automatically push back against that, or if it's really grossing you out, that's because. God changed that process when it was able to be changed. And then he made mankind essentially to, uh, be grossed out by that. He, he had a very, um, structured point in time where he said, this is no longer permissible.
We have structures that are able to do things differently, and now it's an abomination in the sight of God. This is what Leviticus 18 says. And there's natural consequences for not obeying those things. Like you can find the, the dominance. Even in like the British hierarchy of the, the monarchy and people marrying their cousins and brothers and stuff like that, you, you get a lot of, um, messed up gene pools because the first rule of genetics is you gotta spread the genes apart.
But that wasn't the case to begin with. God changed that at one point in recorded history and, and since then, it has been built into us in natural law to avoid those things.
Hmm. Just as a reminder on these questions, uh, I have not given these questions to Chris ahead of time. These are all, um, just came in anonymously and I'm throwing 'em at.
So just so you know, again, you can submit your question dad tire.com/question. Um, on that same line of thinking, um, why did people live such longer lives? We see many people in scripture, 700, 800, 900 years. Why did people live such longer lives than we do now?
There's a few different reasons for that. One of the first one being that God actually limits human life to 120 years, 126 years, somewhere in the Old Testament.
Again, I haven't seen these things, so I don't have chapter and verse for you perfectly all the time. But, um, I. Before that, a couple of the arguments are, does, does God just scrunch the system at that point, particularly 'cause of the Tower of Babel and those other things that as people were living longer, they were coming up with new ways to try to, um, basically depose God and to get rid of that idea and.
So there's something almost about the wisdom of brevity of life and desiring things of the kingdom and being prepared for those things. The second thing would be, is it the case that before the firmament of, um, the Old Testament, that it says. In the book of Genesis, the waters, God separated the waters above, from the waters below.
And so at that time, was there almost like this, uh, watery covering over the earth, which kind of falls during the flood. That's what it talks about. God opened up the floodgates of the heavens and brought them down. So at that time. The number one thing that ages us is the sun and the atmosphere that the sun kind of produces.
That's what causes us to go through that process. So with a firmament above, were people able to live longer? Did it preserve their skin and bodies and hearts and organs? Was there more purity in those things? Those are all things that we are not super aware of, but that would be my best guess. Some theologians actually believe when it says that.
Adam lived to be 909 years old. Methuselah lived to be 969 years old, who was the oldest man who's ever lived that. Those are actually lineages and not individual people, and as the head of the family, it's talking about the line of them living that long. I. That could be the case, but I, I like the firmament idea and I like the protection, um, of the brevity of life that God moves to when mankind continues to do those other things.
So I think that's a better explanation for it. Another one that we'll have to figure out when we get to heaven.
Yeah. For context, I think you were referring to, uh, Genesis six three. Then the Lord said, my spirit will not contend with humans forever. They are for they are mortal. Their days will be 120 years.
Is that what you were?
Exactly. Yep.
Yeah. Um, a lot of guys wanted to know, does the Bible speak about dinosaurs? I.
Yeah. Uh, this is a, another one. Everyone's got their own theory on these things. I think mine would be, uh, that, um, God exterminates the dinosaurs in the flood because of their lack of cohabitation with people and the um.
That some people, and I don't hate this idea, which is again with the firmament idea as mankind was limited, were the other animals and creatures limited as well. Um, you got homologous structures and different kinds of birds that are the self same or similar to other animals that we have still in modern day and other species that are like that.
So is a dinosaur what you would find. If lizards were allowed to live for a thousand years, would they just keep growing? The reason that we don't have bigger ones, I think that's actually what the word tyrannosaurus means or something, or the word dinosaur meant terrible lizard, but. Because there's, they share so many different things with other reptiles and, um, so is it the case that permission to live a lot longer change some of those structures or whatever it is?
I don't know. The, they're all different theories in it. The book of job seems to speak of a creature with a tail, like a cedar tree. The Leviathan that is talked about, that seems to be like God's pet in the deepest part of the oceans, is that the moosa. I don't know the answer to all those questions, but I'm probably someone who believes that dinosaurs cohabited with, um, people or during that original creation and then were swept up into the global flood.
And that is why. It's essentially why, no matter who you talk about with the Geological Times Shelf that it doesn't. You can say, oh, the Jurassic period was 93 million years ago, or 63 million years ago. But no one really knows any of that stuff because it assumes uniformitarian thinking. So I think there's space with all of it to.
Guess and have our best understandings, but I'm probably someone who thinks that the global flood was something that, and again, I should probably do more research on it. I'm not extremely interested in it, but I know a lot of people are. So maybe I should become more interested. There's not like an Apologetics conference I go to where I don't.
Get asked this question and it's just not interesting to me, but that would be my best guess is that's what happened.
That's because you don't live where I live, bro. We have dinosaurs in our pond, like I'm looking at the pond and I'm seeing that. Mini dinosaur crawl up and think about eating my children.
And that you don't leave is the wildest, like you have dinosaurs in your backyard and you're like, yeah, come on Elijah, let's go fishing.
I like to one ex exercise my faith. I like to seek God's creation. You mentioned, um, you said there were something billion, millions of years ago. Uh, one of the questions that we had was, how old is the earth?
Um. Do we have an idea? Biblically obviously lots of arguments on that.
Yeah, so John Lennox has a really great talk on this. John Lennox is a, ma is an Oxford mathematician. He's brilliant. And, um, his, his understanding is the same one that I have had and he just obviously articulates it better than I do, which is that, um.
The beginning of the Bible uses the phrase, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. And in the original Hebrew, that's actually a completely different time marker than when it says now the earth was formless and void in verse two. So I believe that the distance in time between verse one of the Bible and verse two of the Bible is an indeterminate period of time.
But the past tense that's written in the first verse of the Bible is actually a a lot more. Intense and infinitely further back than the second verse in the Bible. Hmm. So, um, they're written in completely different past tense forms that leads me to believe that when, what we would call the big bang, or the original expansion or the singularity, um, took place billions and billions of years ago.
But then Genesis chapter one, beginning at verse two is explaining how God took. The Rock of Earth. What that? The Hebrew calls wild and waste. Now the earth was formless and void. Tohu vivo, who in the Hebrew, and he transforms that waste, that broken, dark, wild and waste rock into a place formidable for humans to live in.
And that's the story Where're actually getting in Genesis. Chapter one, beginning at verse two through the end of chapter two, is God taking this very old chunk of rock that was created in the beginning. That word there means as far back as you want to go. So in the beginning, which is now what almost all of astrophysics tells us happened that there was a beginning where everything in space, time, and matter came to be.
And as a part of that, then. Beginning at verse two is God reforming this chunk of rock that is billions of years old into a habitable place for mankind. So that would be, we call it gap theory, and that I think that best fits within the text. It's a six day creation. Some people believe in yam theory, which is each of those days are millions or billions of years.
Um, I, I don't think the tech supports that as well as the idea of. The distance between verse one and verse two being an indeterminate period of time likened to billions of years. So I believe that the earth is old, the earth as we know it is much younger.
Hmm, interesting. Okay. Here's a of this question had like maybe three different versions of it come in, um, but really all asking the same thing.
So they were asking, is it okay to masturbate to photos of your wife when you're traveling for an extended amount of time?
Yeah. Um, again, and I think maybe some pastors would fall on different sides of this. I'm one that I never want. To tell the, to say what the Bible doesn't say. And this is not something that's very clear for us.
So I don't want, we would call it, it's a big words ara. Um, that means the Bible doesn't command it and it doesn't forbid it. When the Bible talks about lust and adultery, Jesus takes the Old Testament idea of adultery and moves it into the heart, and he says, I tell you, if a man looks after a woman and lust in his heart, he's guilty of committing adultery with her.
So it's really interesting that when you move that to the idea of your own wife or a picture of your own wife, what is there? Um, I think. Difficulty of masturbation, and it's not extremely clear again in the scriptures, is the other aspects of it, if you really think about it, are, um, auto erotic, right?
That you are still pleasuring yourself. And the other thing is, it, it just seems like an open door, this is my personal thing, is that it seems like an open door for other things to enter into the picture, that once you have become aroused or you've auto aroused, or even to a picture that. That does seem like a place where the enemy can get in and begin to infiltrate the thought thoughts with other things.
And again, that law of diminishing return of what happens if that's no longer sufficient or you begin to stray in some other way. So I think in some ways it can become fairly, uh, some form of like a gateway. The Bible is an explicit on it, on what it means. It would have, wouldn't have pictures. Right? Like an etching of your wife in the, in the Old Testament.
That doesn't make any sense that. The Bible doesn't speak about that, so I don't want to say a blanket condemnation or, or commendation to do it. I would say, um. It's, it's far safer to say I would avoid that. Also, I think some guys are under the assumption that you go, well, if I'm traveling anyway and I, I'm really like, wound up, what do you want me to do?
If you're talking to your wife and you guys are both good with it and you really feel in your spirit and your personal liberty that that's different and you're able to get past the idea of like that homoeroticism or that auto eroticism. Um, then I, I don't, I don't wanna make the Bible say what it doesn't say.
I think I probably fall personally on the more conservative side of it where I, I don't know that that would go well personally, and so I would probably avoid it. But again, I want to, especially when we're doing these q and a things, I don't, there's a lot of pastors who have like these hot button issues or they make, they major in a minor issue or they minor in a major issue.
I'm gonna be totally frank with you where I don't think the Bible makes this supremely clear. We can derive themes and motifs and come to what we feel like is something helpful, but I don't wanna make the Bible say what it doesn't say. So I would say the safer side is to avoid it, but, um, I would not be comfortable saying that it is some sort of blanket sin.
Um, es especially if, um, those other things about the auto and the homoeroticism are avoided. So that's kind of where I fall on it.
Um, somebody asked, what is the difference between a Jehovah what a Jehovah Witness believes and what a evangelical Christian believes?
The deed of Christ is the big thing. So Jehovah's Witness believes that Jesus is actually the incarnate, Archangel Michael.
There's a lot of things that go into that, but essentially they reject the idea that Jesus is, um, very God of very God as the creed states that he is the same as God, that he comes from God, that he is pre. That he is preexistent, that he's the alpha, the omega, so they would reject the deity of Christ is the, there's a lot of things that go into that.
There's, you know, because of that, they don't celebrate Christmas, they don't believe in birthdays, things like that. But those are all secondary or tertiary issues. The main thing is that if you talk to a Jehovah's Witness and you say, do you worship Jesus as God? They would say, absolutely not. So they believe he's a messenger from God, but subservient.
To subordinate to God, and that he should not be worshiped as God, which clearly we see in the text of Scripture. Jesus being worshiped. Jesus receiving worship. Jesus calling himself equal to God. In Psalm, uh, 46, Hebrews one, verse eight, Jesus is. Called God by Yahweh, specifically Isaiah chapter six, Isaiah sees Yahweh on the throne in John 1241 Denotes that the person he saw on the throne is actually Jesus, not Yahweh, uh, not the Father.
So we have really good reason to be confident in our belief system, but, um, that's what a Jehovah's Witness believes in a, in the most basic setting, which distinguishes it from evangelical Christianity.
Hmm. If God is the creator of everything, why did he create the devil?
Well, it's an interesting idea to ask that question, I think particularly in the realm of, if you take it to its logical conclusion, which is God shouldn't make anything that rebels against him.
Uh, I like to ask it this way. If God were to eliminate everything that rebels against him, would you be comfortable if he started with you? If God eliminated everything evil that tempts other people to sin, would you be okay if he started with you? There's something in the glory of God that says that God receives more glory in the fact that free creatures choose to obey and or rebel against him than it would be that God only makes those who will.
Worship him or those that he makes worship him or that he would eliminate all potential rivals. He doesn't put up with rivals, he doesn't permit idolatry. But there's something in the character of God that says that those things actually bring him more and not less glory. So when we look at it from a human perspective, we go, well, this would be a lot better for me if Satan didn't exist.
But ultimately, Isaiah 43 tells us we are made for God's glory. And there's something in his economy that says that Satan, existing and evil being there actually will in. In the end come out in the wash as bringing him more glory than if there was nothing in competition for him. And so that's what we're kind of resigned to as Christians.
That's gives us a good enough explanation and that should be enough for us to believe.
Wow, really good man. Uh, what is the historical context in the possible accuracy of the shroud of Turin? And can you give some background context for somebody who might not be familiar with that?
So the shroud of Turin is named.
So because it was stored in Italy since the time of Jesus, supposedly the shroud of Turin is the burial cloth of Jesus. It is believed particularly by the, uh, Catholic community as being predominantly as the holder of, um, relics and those things. Catholics are really good at that stuff. Um, but I believe that it's the burial shroud that Jesus was actually entombed in when he was placed in the tomb.
Um, this is probably going to blow your mind, but I'm a believer in the shroud of Turin. A lot of people don't. Um, and for, for the
people that don't, uh, why don't they? And what makes you convinced that it. So the
interesting part about the shroud of Turin is that, uh, and you can look this up online, a blast of light and heat that happened in some fraction of a fraction of a thousandth, of a millionth of a second took place that was so bright that things at that time couldn't have created a light so bright that it actually super imposes an image of Jesus on the cloth.
So the shroud of turn is so interesting because it's the first picture ever taken was the. Dead, Jesus being resurrected. So there was a burst of light and power that was so powerful that it superimposed a negative image on a piece of cloth, and yet it was so brief that it didn't catch it on fire and have it.
Burn every other assumption of what could have happened has been rejected. It's not a painting, it's not those things. The, um, there's blood, and when you look at it, there's blood around the head, which would've been consistent with the crown of thorns. There's blood at the palms and the wrist, which would've been consistent with a crucifixion victim.
The height, I think of the person, the shroud of twins, about five foot five, which would've been consistent with a ancient near eastern, uh, peasant carpenter from Nazareth at that time. He's bearded. He's got, uh, the, the marks of being a Nazarene are all over him. Um, his feet are marked with. With nail holes.
He's a crucifixion victim. And so the reason that the shroud of turn is rejected, shroud of is rejected is because when they did a, uh, test a, a radio dating test on it, they actually used a piece of the cloth that. Nuns in, I think it was the fifth or sixth century. 13th century. I don't remember exactly when a group of nuns actually patched the shroud of Turin because there was a fire in the cathedral.
Mm-hmm. And the parts of the, the, the shroud that burned, they patched with. Modern CLO cloth. And so when they went to test the shroud, they grabbed the modern piece of cloth and tested that, and that one was dated at, you know, 12th, 13th century. Well, of course it would be. You didn't grab original, the original shroud.
So when you do, um, image graphing, when you do pollenization tests, when you look at the fibers that are in them and are they consistent with ancient first century ancient near eastern, um, areas, then you actually get a very different story, which is, I think there's really great credibility to it and people are still kind of.
Flummoxed at the idea of what could have made an image. So if you want to go look at it, you can go Google it online. The shroud of turrin and the shroud on its surface just you can see kinda these red spots and everything. But then when you put it as a superimposed negative, you can see a picture of the crucifixion victim and no one really knows how that could have possibly happened unless it was.
Something supernatural that we wouldn't have understood. I'm a believer in it. I don't rest my faith on it. If it was found out to be a hoax next week, I would just go, oh, darn. That was pretty cool. But I think you can look at the Maja Center of Research and Development. Uh, father Reverend uh, Spitzer. Is actually one of the foremost experts on the shroud of Turin.
And the study and technology they're doing on it is extremely, it's just exciting. It's really cool to think that the first picture ever taken was of the most miraculous event ever. Taking place, which is the resurrection of Jesus. So I love it. Yeah. But I research it. 'cause I'm a nerd. I You don't ever have to, or you might not find it.
Everyone just logged off, by the way, because they're going to look up the rou of TUR right now if they didn't know about it. But I'm a believer in it. I'm okay if it's not real if, but, um. In all the research that I've done, which is many, many, many, many, many, many hours on it, uh, I'm, I'm actually more convinced than I was originally.
It was written off immediately because of that dating process with that piece of patch cloth, and now it's coming back into the, the mainstream as being very, a lot more interesting than we thought. So I'm for it, but it is what it is.
If you want to ask a question, you can ask anonymously. Go to dad tire.com/question and we will get your question uh answered.
Hopefully, we've got a lot to get through, but we'd love to answer them. Thank you guys for listening, and we'll see you next week.