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Real faith. Real life. Hosted by Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown of Sandals Church, The Debrief Podcast goes beyond Sunday conversations—diving into the questions, stories, and struggles that shape who we are. Thoughtful. Honest. Unfiltered.
Welcome to the debrief podcast with Matthew Stephen Brown, where we take questions about faith, the bible, and culture, and give you honest practical advice you can trust. This is a space to ask anything and get real answers for real life. We're glad you're here. Now let's get into today's episode.
Tammy Brown:Well, hey, everybody, and happy New Year. We're so excited to start the year off with you guys. Before we look ahead though, today, we have some questions that we're going to revisit.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Yes. Some mistakes that I made.
Tammy Brown:2025. And so we have some great questions. I'm Tammy. If you're new today, I'm pastor Matt's wife, but this is the debrief podcast with pastor Matthew Steven Brown.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Right.
Tammy Brown:So let's get into this. Before we get into some of the questions, I have a question for you based on lots of people kind of asking us this personally, texting, calling, emailing. So last month or a few sermons back, let's say it like that for timing, you referred to Jesus in your message as a Palestinian Jew.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Yeah. Correct? Yes.
Tammy Brown:And so people have questions about what did you mean by that, kind of interpreting it maybe through the political climate today. So we thought, let's just talk about that here and give you a chance to give some context and then clarify.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Yeah. So let me just start off by saying I didn't know that's what I said until multiple people
Tammy Brown:That sounds like a marriage fight for us.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Right? Did I say that? Multiple people said, hey. That that's what you said. Why did you say that?
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:And so let me just start off by saying that I have two regrets. One, that, you know, I said that because nowadays, the word Palestine instantly includes a political agenda and ideology, right? So it thrusts us immediately into the twenty first century, and that's not what I meant to do at all. So I apologize, you know, just for that. Interesting.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:And then secondly, you know, it really took the attention away from the passage, which was, If any man would come after me, let him deny himself, pick up his cross, and follow me. And it really made me sad that this message to a rigorous discipleship and calling was kind of missed for some people because I used a political hotbed word, Palestine. And so here's why I slipped up and said that. And there's going to be some people that fire back right on the other side that are going say, absolutely, he was a Jew from Palestine. And let me just say, if I was sitting in a church service and I was listening to a pastor preach and he referred to Jesus as a Jew from Palestine, that would not bother me.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:It would not bother me. And the reason for that is when I'm studying scripture, I am examining, when we're talking about Jesus, almost 2,000 of history. And so for most of that time, the region has been known as Palestine. So when I'm reading, when I'm studying, when I'm looking at it, right, I'm coming across that word. I think the reason that I used it, and I don't know, I mean, I don't know why I said it, but I think for me, I said Jesus is a Jew from Palestine, so that non Christians who don't know their Bibles would understand maybe where he's coming from.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:And so I used it like the term Middle East. That's how I meant to use it, like as a geographical area, not as a political entity or state. And so one of the first questions I got from a pastor is, why didn't you say Jesus was a Jew from Israel? And you have to understand that Israel, as we understand it, did not exist when Jesus was here. Israel, as we understand it, existed in 1948.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Israel was a country that existed in 1948. Now some people are gonna lose their minds. Wait a minute. Israel is all throughout the Bible. Yes.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:There was a period of time where Israel existed under a very few kings in a unified kingdom. So David and Solomon in particular. Right? Initially, it is the land of Canaan, so it's called the land of Canaan. God calls Abraham to this land, and it's it's called the land of Canaan.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:It's called the the promised land. Jews today would call it Eretz Ye Israel. Eretz is the word land, so the land of Israel. But it's been known by various names. So here's the thing is, people, when you say Jesus was from Israel, you have to go to the Gospel of Luke, because Luke is a historian, and he wants us to know exactly where Jesus is from.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:And this is why this issue is more complicated than some people think. Jesus stands trial before Pontius Pilate, who is the governor of Judea. And so that's the name that people want me to use. Jesus was a Jew from Judea. Okay?
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:And and and again, if someone said Jesus was was from Judea, I'm not gonna lose my mind. Pilate ascertains, this is what the gospel of Luke says, that Jesus was not of Judea, that he was a Galilean. And so for us, we're like, So what? That's Israel. No, no.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:So then he sends him to Herod, who's the king of Galilee, the northern region. And so Israel existed for a brief period of time as Israel, as the tribe of Judah, all of these things. I mean, now I just messed up. See, even that, it's really, really complicated, but they split in the Northern Kingdom, which would have been called Israel, and the Southern Kingdom, which would have been called Judea. And so Judea is the region in Southern Israel that was still known as the region of the Jews in that day.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:The Northern Region, or the region of Galilee, which is actually where Jesus is from, so you could say Jesus the Nazarene, Jesus of Galilee, right, is a northern region, but it was a separate political entity with a different ruler, King Herod, who they didn't like each other. And it says, in that moment when they crucified Christ, they became friends. So it's multifaceted. And so then when we look to the book of Acts, Jesus says, you will be my witnesses, first in Jerusalem, then in Judea, then in Samaria. So we haven't even mentioned Samaria.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Samaria is its own ethnic separate entity within the land that we would call the nation of Israel. So see what I'm saying? It's really, really complicated. And then if we go back to the birth of Jesus in the Gospel of Luke, it says that the governor of the of of the region of Syria, his name is Quirrhenius, put that in the notes if I said it wrong, he decided that there should be a census that was taken. So you could say Jesus was of the region of Syria in that day.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:See what I'm saying? So it's trying to explain somebody, you know, two thousand years from now that we live in the IE. Well, where is that? Well, it's in California. Well, where is that?
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:It's The United States. Well, what is that? Right? So there's all of these different geographic terms, but-
Tammy Brown:Or is it Redlands?
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Yeah, is it Redlands or is whatever? So Jesus was a Jew, and he lived in a region under the control of the Roman Empire. And under the control of the Roman Empire, they divided the region up into specific areas. Syria, which is where modern day Syria is. Palestine, which is the word that I referenced is, some historians refer to it, and even the Greeks, as Syria Palestina.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:So a lot of people like to say that the word Palestine is not in use until the Bar Koba revolution that shut down, and literally, the Romans were like, it's not going be referred to as Judea anymore. It is now Palestine. But that's not something that they just pulled out of a hat. It was already a term that was used for the coastal province where the Philistines would have come from. So see what I'm saying?
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:So it's messy and it's muddy. So here's what I would say for everybody that's listening. Give me grace. I'm going to say things. I'm going to misstep.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:I'm going to make mistakes. The only way that I cannot do that is to be a manuscript preacher. So And what that is, is I write out my sermon, and I read it word for word. And there's a lot of our friends that we know that do that for this very reason. I think that would limit how I communicate.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:So I would just ask for grace. I wasn't trying to make a political statement at all that Israel should not exist or that they don't have a right to exist, or I wasn't trying to say that Jesus wasn't Jewish. He is Jewish. He's the Jewish Messiah. And I'm pretty sure I said a Jew from Palestine, but meant it in a geographical sense, not in a sense,
Tammy Brown:not in a theoretical climate Yeah. It wouldn't have hit maybe the same and given the same questions to people because it is such a sensitive topic right now with everything that's going on. And so, of course, it made people, like, kinda perk up when they heard it is under I mean, it made me perk up. I asked
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:you like, hey. What was that? You you actually caught it.
Tammy Brown:Sometimes I was like I'm like, you know too much. Like, it just comes out, but the rest of us that are, like, playing catch up sometimes have to Yeah. Stop and think. Like, people in the back, that's me. I'm people in the back.
Tammy Brown:But you're saying you weren't you're processing it through, like, your historical study of the region Mhmm. Not the people groups now, the land divisions now, all
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:of that. Yeah. No. No. And I mean, and I
Tammy Brown:It's a great question. I mean, I even had it, so I love that you're
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:so And so there might excited be about some pushback that he was born in Bethlehem, which was Judea, and amen. Yes. Bethlehem is in Judea. But if you were born in Canada, in Montreal, and then your parents moved to Mexico because Jesus goes to Egypt, and then you lived your whole life in Californian, how would you define yourself? Yeah.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:You wouldn't say, no, I'm Canadian, or you wouldn't say, oh, I lived my first two years in Mexico. Jesus wouldn't have identified as an Egyptian, but he lived in Egypt longer than he did Judea. He would have identified as a Galilean. That's what he would have said, and so that was his home base for his ministry. It's where he spent his entire life.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Nazareth is just a few miles from the Sea Of Galilee, and so he would have identified as the Galilean, or more specifically, Jesus of Nazareth. And so super complicated. Give me grace. If that's offended you, I tried. I tried to back it off, but just realize that everybody is trying to use Jesus for their own political gains.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:I was not. It was just something that I didn't realize that I said. Pastor Fredo had also said that a couple of weeks ago. And again, it's just because when we're studying and we're in these texts, that's the word that's bouncing around a lot. And so it happens.
Tammy Brown:Now I appreciate that because I was one of those people that was like, hey. Tell me what you meant by that. I've never heard it said like that. I've never thought heard it. I did not know I And said sometimes I feel like you have much more context roaming around in this brain of yours.
Tammy Brown:You have thirty five plus years of studying that in a way that most of us don't, so I actually
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:And that can get in the way when you're trying to communicate a thirty minute message.
Tammy Brown:Yeah. So Totally.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:But thank you for the question. And
Tammy Brown:Yeah. Yeah. No. That that was great. Thank you.
Tammy Brown:Okay. You ready for these questions? Yes. This first one comes from Xavier. Xavier.
Tammy Brown:Xavier. Yeah. Sorry. Xavier right here from Riverside. And I love it because it comes from a fifth grade student, or they have a fifth grade student.
Tammy Brown:I taught fifth grade when
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:I was
Tammy Brown:a school teacher. I have a special heart for fifth graders. I love that age. It says, I had a fifth grade student at our church ask this question. If God knows the choices we will make, is it really free will or is it that our decisions are set in stone?
Tammy Brown:And this question stumped me. How do I explain this to a student? Such a good question.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Yeah. So this past weekend, the sermon that I preached you guys are listening to this in the January, but the sermon that I preached for Christmas weekend, not Christmas Eve message, but the Christmas Eve, I talked about the importance of children in our goal to become like Christ. Jesus says that we gotta become like children, and and how important they are, and this is just one of those things, because children will ask questions that really deepen our faith. And so, you you used to teach fifth grade, but we used to watch that show, Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader? And the answer is no.
Tammy Brown:Absolutely Because,
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:you know, fifth graders God, are supposed to know a teacher
Tammy Brown:manual back in the day.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:So Xavier is asking a question that Christians have been wrestling with and fighting over for about, I'm going to say really since Augustine, so let's say for sixteen hundred years. So here's the question, is everything determined? Has God sovereignly determined everything, or do human beings actually have free will? And so Christians fall all over the place on that. Catholics tend to lean towards free will.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Many Protestants or Reformed lean towards God's sovereignty or towards what's called Calvinism, which unfortunately really isn't Calvinism, it's really Augustinianism, and so John Calvin is rediscovering Augustinians' beliefs and the idea that God has sovereignly decreed all things. So Xavier's question is a question that will be answered based upon churches and their particular theologies. And so it's a spectrum of ideas that on the left hand, I'm making my hand up the left if you're listening to the car, is God's totally in control. He has decreed all things. Nothing happens that He has not decreed.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:You know, that's your five point Calvinist, like hardcore Calvinist
Tammy Brown:What does five point mean?
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:It's just tulips. So, and of course, I didn't know you were going ask me that, but T is total gravity. Absolutely, for
Tammy Brown:a friend.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:U is nobody knows you. L is limited atonement. P is perseverance of the saints. And I is, I can't believe you just asked me the question.
Tammy Brown:I'm so sorry, but I don't know what it means.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Yeah, thank you. So let's start over. Let's edit this. So t is total depravity. The idea and and and again, I know that there are Calvinists that are gonna respond to this, not all Calvinists believe this, but it but it basically means there's nothing good about you.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Some softer Calvinists would say there's nothing you could do to earn your salvation. Mhmm. So u is unconditional That's the one I always mess up with, and so basically, God has decided in advance who's saved and who's not saved. L is limited atonement, that is that God only died for the elect. I is irresistible grace, and then P, which is the part of TULIP that I hold to, is perseverance of the saints.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:And so the reason I hold to that is I believe that you can't be unsaved. So, and there are people that I love and I respect that disagree with that, but I don't know how you can be unborn again. I just, as I look at scripture, I think that it's not me holding onto Christ, but when I repent, when I confess, it's him holding onto me. And so I really find value in the P Tulip. But a Calvinist would say, you got to have all of them or none of them.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:And then there are soft Calvinists. Anyway, so Calvinists on the one end, and then really there's an internal argument there of Calvinism versus Arminism, and they're really arguing in the same family, so I don't want a Calvinism would be, a Calvinist would be horrified by the fact that I'm saying this, but they're fighting in the same camp. So then there's Mullenism, which is where I land, and then there is Do
Tammy Brown:wanna explain what
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Yeah, that is I'll get there in a second. Yeah. So there's moltenism, which is where I kind of land, and I hold onto this loosely. And then there's open theist. And so basically Calvinist believes God knows all has decided all.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Molinism, which is what I believe is, God knows all, but somehow, someway, we still have free choice, and I'll explain that in a second. And then open theists believe that God cannot know things, so God can sovereignly choose to not know the future. So yeah, so I reject that. I think that it's clear that scripture, God knows, and so they would point to Jesus saying, no one knows that, only the Father knows that, but I think that the incarnate Jesus is different than the omniscient, ever present, eternal God. So Jesus limited himself in some ways to become human, so that's what I would say.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:I reject that. But I have friends that lean that way, and the reason they lean that way, right, is to excuse evil, bad things in the world. I mean, you could go as far, an open theist would go as far as, God wouldn't have made man if he knew how bad things were going get. See, I reject that. I'm like, no, I would say that's ridiculous.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:So a Calvinist has said that God knows all things, he has decreed all things. So if you're a Calvinist, I love you. I believe you're Christian. I disagree with your theology, but I love you. Here's three verses I would encourage you to wrestle through, and so I was trained in Calvinism when I was going through seminary, and here's really the first three things that caused me to really begin questioning that.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:And the first one is in Genesis chapter four when Cain kills Abel, and God says to Cain that sin is crouching at your door, and you must master it, right? So God is telling Cain that he has choice. He has agency. He has a decision to make. God didn't decree that Cain would kill Abel, but God spoke into Cain's life and said, You must not sin.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:So what I would say from that text is we're responsible. In order to be truly responsible, I believe we have to have a choice. So here's where I think Mullenism is a better position, and the most famous Mullenist today is from the school that I attend, Biola, William Lane Craig, I think he's a genius. Mullenism says that God knows all, including every possible scenario of what you would make. So if you had a decision to make and there are a thousand different choices for you to make in that one decision, God knows what would happen if you made each of those thousand, but still allows you to freely choose whichever one of those thousand choices you make.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Now, obviously, it could be 10,000, it could be a billion, I don't know. And that God works through history, knowing the outcome of our unlimited choices, because he's sovereign, he navigates through history to bring about Christ to save mankind. So I think Mullenism is the best argument for God's sovereignty, God's knowledge, God's control, and our free will. Now, Calvinists are going lose their minds because what they believe is that, right, that if I am truly free, then that is making me greater than God's sovereignty. And I would just say, wherever you are, whether you're a Calvinist, an Armenianist, whether you're a Mullanist, and I wouldn't say I'm a Mullanist, I would just say that's the one that makes the most sense to me, or you're an open theist, we all are throwing our hands up in the air some way to mystery, because none of them explain everything.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:So for example, if you're a Calvinist and God has decreed all things, what do you do with evil? If everything that ever happens is because of the decree, counsel, and idea of God, what do you do with deep evil? What do you do with the Holocaust? What do you do with abortion? What do you do with murder, rape, incest?
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:All of those things. What the Calvinist says is, We don't know. It's a mystery. So what I'm saying is I reject that mystery, and what I do is I put my mystery over here. Rather than saying God has decreed all things, I just say, I don't know how God's sovereignty and my free will work together, they just do.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:I don't know. And so I think it's where you put the mystery of your faith.
Tammy Brown:Interesting.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:And so that's what's important. So I'm a Calvinist person. So Genesis chapter four, Cain kills Abel. The next one is the great flood. Noah found favor in God's sight.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:The Hebrew's very clear. God didn't sovereignly declare that Noah was righteous. It says that he found. He discovered. Oh, there is.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:And it seems to indicate that God is interacting with a sinful humanity who is free to choose, and Noah chose to be righteous, to live righteous. Then there's another verse, and this one is really, really important. It's an ugly verse, it's a terrible verse, but it's in Jeremiah chapter 19, I think it's verse two, I don't have it in front of me, and I don't have the whole Bible memorized, basically the Israelites- That
Tammy Brown:shocks me.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Yeah. The Israelites, you guys, listen to this, they're sacrificing their children to the God of Molech. So they're setting their children on fire. Maybe it's Baal. This instance could be Baal, so put that in the notes.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:It's either Baal or Molech. And Jeremiah nineteen:two, am I right on the verse, or is it seven? I'm dyslexic. God says this, I did not tell you to do this. I never commanded you to do this.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:I did not decree it. Remember, the Calvinist says, All things are decreed. And then the Hebrew says, It never even entered my mind. So the people of Israel are doing things that never even entered God's mind. And so that's just a starting place, and that's not to say if you're a Calvinist, you're wrong.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:I'm just saying that's why I lean towards human beings have liberty and have free will. Now, a Calvinist would say, Well, we don't have total free will because I can't be a bird and fly. So there are limitations to my humanity. I can't be all places.
Tammy Brown:There things that
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:make I can't sense do all things. God has limited some of my abilities. You know, I can't choose to be seven feet tall. I can't choose to be a genius. So there are limitations to my free will, and I would freely acknowledge that, but I am morally responsible for my decisions.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:And when I stand before God on judgment day, I believe the Calvinist argument for condemnation to hell unravels because, according to the Calvinist argument, you did as you were decreed to do. You did not choose to do those things. Now, a Calvinist is going to push back, and they're going to try to sound like what I'm saying as a molest. And what I'm going to say is, then just be a molest. Like, just say, like, we don't know.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Somehow God is working out in that. But this question that Xavier has is a question that's divided the church. I mean, the Reform movement was not unified on this. A lot of Calvinists don't know this, but the largest group that comes out of the Reform movement is Baptists, and historically, we have not been Calvinists, but there was infighting and killing and terrible things, right, within that whole movement. So just to say all that, God knows all things, and somehow we are responsible for our choice.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:That's what matters. So the question is, if God knows the choices we will make, is it free will, or are decisions set in stone? No, your decisions are not set in stone, and you are accountable for what you do.
Tammy Brown:So was gonna be my question is, this is saying, how would I answer this for a to a fifth grader? And all of that was so good, but I'm like,
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:well, I would I would
Tammy Brown:be, what, like, forty fifth grader at this point? Yes. And I am like really trying to lock in to stay with you. If you had to summarize that of how could our teachers that are teaching our Yeah. Our Sandals Church kids here, like, would you answer that in a simple way for
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:I would say our decisions are being written in stone, and what we do will last for eternity. So But
Tammy Brown:are in real time.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Are in real time. They have not been, but they are. And so our decisions matter. And one day we will stand before God, and the books will be opened, not that he wrote, that we wrote, with our lives and our choices. And we will be accountable for what we did.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:We repent? Did we turn to God? And so I just, again
Tammy Brown:That's good.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:I preach, I preach
Tammy Brown:Also, that helped me.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Yeah, I preach like people have a choice. One of my favorite verses when Paul is writing to Timothy, he says that we should argue in such a way that perhaps people will be convinced. So Paul, right, the author of Calvinism is saying, No, no, we preach in such a way that hopefully we can win our enemies over, and win those people who disagree with us over. Preaching matters, tone matters, the gospel matters. And you know, at the end of the day, my Calvinist brothers would say, Oh, you're putting salvation in your hands.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:I'd say, No, I'm putting it in Jesus' hands. It's in his hands. God has sovereignly chosen that all who humble themselves and repent of their sins and believe in Lord Jesus Christ shall be saved. That is how God has sovereignly chosen to save people, and that is my understanding of the gospel. I think it's the traditional understanding until Augustine in the fourth century.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:So great, great question. No.
Tammy Brown:And I love how you answered it because I do think not just fifth graders, but a lot of adults or new Christians, when they hear the things that's why I tried to ask you in real time to explain it. When they hear you throughout Calvinist, Five Points, Tulip,
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:aren't Well, you threw out Tulip. I didn't, but
Tammy Brown:I did I answer actually didn't because I never heard it before. But I think it's helpful for all of us to you know, sometimes I think when you know things to the extent that you know them, you like, you're talking a language the rest of us don't really Right. Know in real time. And so thank you for that. I always respect how much you know.
Tammy Brown:I mean, it also is your
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:favorite And again, these are things that professors I love and respect disagree with me on, and what's important is that we don't put each other down. That's when you know it's the devil. Yeah. We don't call each other a false church.
Tammy Brown:Or see each other as better than the other. Yeah. It's just an understanding.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Well, I say don't treat each other as a false church. I mean, have been disagreements on this issue for hundreds of years. You know, when Rick Warren gave me a tour of his library, he had is it I can't remember. It's Armenius and John Calvin and Jacob Armenius. Think that's their names.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Their their statues are facing each other. And I said, why'd you do that? And he said, hopefully, one day they'll get along.
Tammy Brown:Oh my goodness.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:So I was like, well, they're dead. So.
Tammy Brown:Alright. Well, this next question, are you ready for it? Yes. We're moving on to children in its own way. Yes.
Tammy Brown:From Annie Moss in Ontario, California. And for those new listeners, Annie Moss is our name for anyone who sends in a question that is anonymous.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Yeah.
Tammy Brown:So hey, Annie Annie Moss. We have answered this question so many times over the years. Is spanking or corporal punishment biblical? It says, we have three children, and we are wrestling with how to discipline and raise them according to scripture. It's a great question and very nuanced, layered, complex.
Tammy Brown:So take it away.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Yeah. I mean, I so I think I have two answers here. So the first answer is spanking or corporal punishment biblical. I would say yes because, the Bible says, Spare the rod, just bore the child, but that's proverb. So the question as a Christian is not just something biblical, but we have to ask, you know, is it appropriate?
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Like, for example, you see slavery in the Bible. Okay. So is that appropriate that I own people? No. Right?
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:When narrow a question, we say, is it biblical? Yes, something could have been biblical in that context, in that time. Now we understand so much more about child development, the psyche of what goes on when a kid is spanked, all of those things. So you and I spanked. If I went back, would I do it again?
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:I would try to not spank. But right, that's easy for me to say now because I'm a grandparent. But the truth is we had three different kids who responded very differently, and one of our three kids only responded to a SWAT on the bottom, no You could talk until Jesus came. It just didn't matter, but there was a reset button on the bottom, give them SWAT, and then everything was great. So what I would say is every family needs to wrestle with this, and I would seek guidance of the Holy Spirit, and then really, really focus on the needs of the individual child.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Every child is unique, Every child is different. You know, our oldest daughter is sitting in here right now. If I gave her a crossword, eyes swelled up with tears, start crying, was repentant. Strong look. Strong look.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:You know? And that worked for her.
Tammy Brown:One of the others.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Yeah. One of the others was not that way. A strong look was like met with, let's go. So, you know, and here's the thing is, what I would say is, you know, is spanking biblical? I would say it's personal.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:And like my dad, you know, my dad was never abusive, but sometimes, you know, he spanked. It was the '80s, was a different time, and I can't imagine what his dad did. Like my grandpa Ed was a sweet man to me, so I don't
Tammy Brown:know And we have the luxury of learning from the generation before us.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Yeah, and so my dad said, you know, hey, I'm really sorry. And so I don't think my dad ever crossed the line. Where I tried to be different was, my dad was a fun dad. Like he liked, he wanted to have fun. So when he disciplined, it was because he was angry.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:I tried to not do that. I failed at it. That happened. But I think that when we discipline our kids, especially if we're going to put hands on it anyway, we cannot be angry. That is not the time.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:You know, instead of giving your two year old a time out or your five year old a time out, you go take a time out, pray about it, and say, okay, how do I communicate this or whatever this is?
Tammy Brown:That actually can end up being the most savage discipline too. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You're gonna go wait till I'm ready.
Tammy Brown:That waiting period for kids can be the worst than any spanking they're ever gonna get, and you were really good at that. Matt did a couple things. One thing he did was that he would always wait till he wasn't angry, and the second was this. If he was ever gonna spank
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Yeah.
Tammy Brown:Or if he like, he would spank his own leg or,
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Yeah. My inner thigh.
Tammy Brown:So that he could feel like, was that too much or too like, because you don't you're not trying to hurt the child. You're trying to make a memory that this is this behavior is dangerous. One of your biggest things you disciplined on is if the kids were gonna do something that could ultimately put them in harm's way and they would not stop, which is so funny. I did it for attitude Yeah. And disobedience, but you you you got more upset when they did things that could cause them potential harm.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Yeah. Which I thought that, you know, you can talk all day long about, Hey, if you do this, this will hurt you. And if that message is not getting through, then like we had one kid that was a runner, and if I said, Don't run, she ran. I'm telling you, we could be in the 91 freeway traffic, and that kid would run. And I mean, there you remember, we were at Catalina Island, and she almost ran over by a bus.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Mhmm. Like, I got her I barely got her by her horse collar.
Tammy Brown:We had two kids. Yeah.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Yeah. We had another kid that She
Tammy Brown:was free.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:And then my wonderful daughter that's sitting in here loved to play with coins in her mouth and choked. So, and I said, if you do that again-
Tammy Brown:It's a game none of us wanted to play.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Was a I say Because let tell you as a parent, there's nothing more terrifying than your child not being to breathe. And so I was like, look. I said, if you do that again, daddy's gonna spank you. And so
Tammy Brown:I think one of the things that you and I have had to talk or, you know, we've talked through other people. Neither of us were physically abused
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Yeah.
Tammy Brown:No. By God's grace, by our parents. But, you know, a lot of people we have a family member whose parents like in our extended family who who was who was physically
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:abused. Yeah.
Tammy Brown:They could not spank their kids
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Yeah.
Tammy Brown:Because they could not separate mentally
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Yeah.
Tammy Brown:The damage that did or or what is appropriate. They there was just no level of, like because it had never been modeled what's appropriate.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Mhmm.
Tammy Brown:And so they could not do it at all. And so some that's why you're saying it's personal because if if if one of the parents was physically abused in their life, they're not going to have an understanding of what a healthy could look like. And there's lots of ways to discipline. I always whenever I'm talking with moms primarily that want to talk about that verse spoil
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Spare the rod.
Tammy Brown:The rod, spoil the child. I think, you know, in our context, when we think of spoiling, we think of like, we're just giving them everything they want.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Yeah.
Tammy Brown:But I like to think of the word spoiling on, like, a different like, what does it mean if something spoils? Like, think of rotten fruit that spoils.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Yeah. Yeah.
Tammy Brown:Think of rotten food that just becomes toxic and gross and dangerous to eat bacteria. When we spoil our kids, it like, we turn them into a person that we don't want them to be or they don't wanna be. And so people who are like, we're gentle parenting or we're not and I that's like a buzzword right now. Or we're just not going to address behavior. That that behavior will get addressed at some point.
Tammy Brown:It may not be in your home, but it'll be the second they leave their home. It will be the second they are making friends at school. It will be the second they're interacting with teachers because the world will not be as kind to your children.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Yeah. They will won't love your kid like you do.
Tammy Brown:And Yeah. So if if you spoil them by never addressing behavior or letting them experience consequences, you're not only rotting them as a human, but you're setting them up for really, really future failures. And so the idea of and that's what God does with us. Right? When when he disciplines us, it's because he doesn't want us it's not because he like, we're good or bad.
Tammy Brown:It's because he's wanting to prevent for us a life he doesn't ever intend for us. And I think when we look at that, like, that is such a huge thing if it's biblical or not. But the spanking and corporal punishment punishment, which is another word for that would be consequence.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Mhmm.
Tammy Brown:Right?
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Yeah.
Tammy Brown:I think is a blessing when done right. But you you do have you you do have to consider
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Yeah. You have to but I mean, I I I, you know, I know that we have therapists in our church that believe even time out is, you know, that that's corporal punishment, that that's shaming. And so, you know, you can just go and that's why I think as parents today, there's so much information. There's so many different opinions. What I would say is, you know, the Bible says that no one loves discipline when it's happening, but a good father does so to train and bring up their child.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:I mean, that's scripture. And so we have to be able to communicate consequence however you do that. And for me, you know, like the running into the street, I was really worried about her being hurt. And so I spanked for that. And I didn't enjoy it.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Didn't like that, but I didn't want a dead kid. And she was not responsive to verbal commands. Stop. Come here. Don't run.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:You know? And then we had the choking thing. And then I think we had one other issue where one time a kid did something to you that I was like, okay, well, we're going to make a memory. So, you know, and again, I'm not saying Here's the problem with today's culture is people are going to rip apart no matter what I say on either What I would say is parenting is hard. Discipline is really hard.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:It's really hard to discipline kids. If you enjoy it, you're abusive. Like, I would just say, like, you get excited about disciplining your kid, don't have
Tammy Brown:kids- I can't think of a time where you and I had to like, for reals, where we wouldn't go back in our room and just be
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:like, what I would say is, if you're worried at all about yourself being abusive, then I wouldn't use physical punishment. I would go to counseling Absolutely. And I would just say, if you're going to on not spanking. But again, if you have a kid like we did where I don't know I don't know how to communicate that cars are dangerous. Like, I don't know what to do.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:And I remember we put our kid on a leash, and remember I got a mouthful for that one.
Tammy Brown:Remember, like, when our kids were little, they made these, like, back packs that had, like, a rope on them. And I when before we had kids, I was like, I would never then we had kids. Was like, where does that backpack happen? Because I'm in the ceiling, and I struggle with fear. If you know me, you know that.
Tammy Brown:And I was terrified that someone was gonna grab the kids and stuff like Where's that leash?
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:We had somebody grab our kid in the airport in Taiwan.
Tammy Brown:Yep. We did.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:And we did. We literally grabbed our son and ran off with him, man.
Tammy Brown:I mean, it's I mean, the other nuance to this too is that and chime into this. I mean, we all we can do is speak from our own experience because we've had to wrestle with this is that discipline also even physical looks different at different ages in different seasons. And so to evaluate what works and doctor Phil, if you've not heard of him, he was like kind of a parent guru when our kids were young. And he would always say, find your kid's currency. Like with our son, if we if he like, you could you could like give him a little swat.
Tammy Brown:He like kinda got it not didn't make a big impact. But if we're like, you don't get your game for a week, like, would be like, that rattled them. Each of our kids had a different currency that mattered to them. We could put one of ours in time out, and they loved it. They were like, awesome.
Tammy Brown:I can be here. I was like, k. You're actually out of time out. Get at the table with all of us. I was like, no.
Tammy Brown:I wanna be alone. And so I think the key or a key, not the key, is knowing your kids. You'll know what works with them and what doesn't work with them. If you have more social kids, pulling social time away. If you have less social, like you're off the game, you're with us.
Tammy Brown:You know, that in in different seasons. One of the things we tried to do is out of the moment, circle back and go, let's talk about that. Here's why we don't want you doing that. Here's why it's not okay for you to do that. Here's why I think that and again, in different seasons that that changes too, like the level you like, with a two year old, you can't be like, this is why I don't want you to do that because you know?
Tammy Brown:And I and people try that. I haven't seen it work super, super well, but every kid is nuanced, and
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:it's I think the rational side of your brain starts developing at four, and so anything before four, I mean, you can talk all day long. They don't care. They can even pair it back. You know, tell mommy you're sorry. They can say it.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:They don't mean it. I mean, just their emotional side of their brain
Tammy Brown:is And then obviously your kids get older, and what are you gonna do? Just like be spanking? Like, have to gain some kind of they have to have an understanding. And if you're relying on just physical discipline when they're older and bigger than you, which they get to a lot of us, that doesn't work. So your strategy can't just be to be physical.
Tammy Brown:It needs to be to help them understand behavior that's okay and not okay. And like I said, you know, I don't think any parent wants their kid to be rotten.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Yeah.
Tammy Brown:Because we all want our kids thriving relationally. Rotten kids don't thrive relationally. Selfish kids don't thrive relationally. Abusive kids that hit and bite, they do not thrive relationally, which is what we all want. So it's like, what's the end game?
Tammy Brown:We want our kids to understand how to play their part in this creator mosaic of humanity.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Yeah. So I would say a couple things. Tired kids are a problem, or excuse me, bored kids are a problem, and tired kids are wonderful. So and and so you say, well, what do you mean by that? If kids have too much energy, they're gonna get in trouble and drive you crazy.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:I literally remember we lived on a cul de sac. We'd go out in the cul de sac and play fetch like you do with your dog, and I would throw the ball, and the kids would it That was a
Tammy Brown:would also be like, let's play
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Oh, yeah. Tread water.
Tammy Brown:Tread water?
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Yeah. Whoever can tread the water the longest gets a cracker. Well, what do you, and the kids were like, you know, they're trying to outlast each other, but you know what they're doing? They're burning energy because if they've been at school all day, they're in a book, or they're on a screen, they're going to be a problem. And here's the one, I think, mistake we made.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Well, We should have been this is the big one. You were a mom that, coming out of your background, right, where you had to do everything and be a parent, you did too much for our kids. We needed to do a better job of, Here's your responsibilities. Here's the things you do. Here's your chores, because the attitude, here's where I feel like you lost it a little bit, right?
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:So you would cook the meal, you would do the dishes, you'd all the work, then the kids don't appreciate it because they're sitting at the table because they didn't work for it. They didn't do it. They weren't a part of it. And so I think, you know, my brother, I always tell you this when I come back, you know, my brother is very good. Like their kids, like his kids are in their 20s, and there's a chore list on I know, they're so And the good at it's because they have roommates who does the dishes.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:You know, it's not that his kids are kids, but he's done a much better job at, here's the things you're responsible for. And so, like, when I was a kid in the eighties, like, I said, you guys aren't eighties kids, if I said, I'm bored, that was open invitation for my mom to give Really? A
Tammy Brown:Oh, well then let's get
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Oh, no. I would
Tammy Brown:be I was be sad.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:If I said I was bored, that meant I was folding laundry. That meant I was doing dishes. Meant that we were we were dusting. My mom like, you never ever said those words. And what I would say as a parent is it's responsibility not to entertain.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:So really, really focus on a sport where the kids are tired or go for a
Tammy Brown:walk,
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:exercise, and then watch what you're giving them, because if it's all carbs and all sugar, I
Tammy Brown:Well, and even today, like screen time, there's so much science behind kids' behavior in correlation to their screen time.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Yeah.
Tammy Brown:And so I think at the end of the day, it's it's like, what is the end game? What do you want for your kid long term to be to fit and interact with this world? Know your kid. Like, we had all of our kids were so different, which we learned with kid number two when we tried to parent Kennedy the way that we parented Madison and it did not work. We're like, oh, and it does it does mean we're managing three strategies at all times.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Yeah.
Tammy Brown:And, you know, with, like, with one of the kids. One of the kids could have done something five nights a week, and their behavior was fine. All their stuff was done. We had a different kid. We had to do the no no doubles.
Tammy Brown:No double sleepovers. Yeah. Like, you know, when you're a kid, it was like, I'll spend the night at your house Friday. You spend the night at my house Saturday. We're like, we don't they could not do doubles.
Tammy Brown:Yeah. Because they it just taxed them emotionally, physically. Yeah. Like, at the end of the day, have to know your kid, learn their currency.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Yeah. And your job is to do the best. You're you're a steward. I mean, what I would say is they're not your kid. They're God's kid.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Yeah. You're a steward. Do the best that you can. Yeah. And just know I'm praying for all the parents.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:And I'm just so grateful that we didn't raise our kids in a day of social media where there's a billion opinions, and I'm just sure people are gonna slaughter me one way,
Tammy Brown:each know, way, all was say, this is
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:And so what I would just say at the end of the day, social media is, that's not who raises your kid, you raise your kid, and so
Tammy Brown:And you know your kid.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:And so there are, there is biblical support for spanking children in the Bible, but that's also led to abuse. And you know, I know a lot of my friends, not a lot, but I have some friends that grew up in Catholic school, and they got spanked by nuns with rulers on their knuckles. And that makes me really sad. And now they don't like Jesus because they've confused, you know, this angry nun that, you know, cracked their knuckles. And so our society's changing, you know, like you guys, when I was in kindergarten at public school in California, we got spanked.
Tammy Brown:Me too. At Christian's school.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:I know that every, like, every young person is like, what?
Tammy Brown:I there was a paddle
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:at No. The principal's
Tammy Brown:When you
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:went to the principal's office, there was a paddle at public school, And, man, I was like, I'm never
Tammy Brown:This is like a scared laugh. Yeah. Know. Like, I know.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Like, people can't like, live in the like, we grew up in make believe land. Like, people can't believe that that
Tammy Brown:And and the things we shared today are the things we've learned. Yeah. In real time, it's hard if you don't put some intentionality to it, so you need to have conversations. You need to think about your kids, think about what works, and then later on, you're like, I wish we would have done that
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:And when you blow and apologize, I cannot tell you how many times I had to apologize and tell my kids, look, dad lost his temper. That's not okay. I say that's sin. And I'll say when you're ready, I hope you can forgive me. You can't make somebody forgive you.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:It's something that God's got to do in their heart. So just know, man, I'm praying for all of you guys, and social media is terrible.
Tammy Brown:Yeah, So we hope that helped. Alright. Last question for this episode, I believe. Yep. Comes from Janice from Riverside.
Tammy Brown:It says, what is your take on the estrangement epidemic? This is such a good question. Thank you, Janice. Adult children are going no contact to their parents. Some of them who are still loving and caring.
Tammy Brown:I'm in a women's bible bible study, and there are three of us whose adult children have gone no contact. This is a very, very interesting thing that you and I are seeing happening much. It'll be interesting. I'm interesting if you'll hit on social media's encouragement of that.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Yeah. So let me just start generally. I think it goes back to our last question. When we were raising our kids, a lot of our friends tried to be their kid's friend. And you heard me tell our kids all time, I am not your friend.
Tammy Brown:The parents try to
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:be Yeah, the their parents try to be their friend. And I think my kids didn't need me to be a friend. They needed me to be a dad. And I can't tell you how many like, all of their friends' parents were cowards, and
Tammy Brown:We've had friends that asked us to discipline their kiddies as they're bastards.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Yeah. And, you know, and so like there's 10 sets of parents. They all know it's a bad idea. You know, like, all of our 14 year olds are gonna go together for a sleepover in Vegas, and I'm like, not.
Tammy Brown:And then privately, they're like, thank you
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:We're much for like,
Tammy Brown:Why are you leaving this And on all the kids are mad at Matt
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:and I. Yeah, all the kids are mad at me because Pastor Matt said it was a bad idea. What I would say is your job is not to be their friend. Your job is to be their parent and to love them. And your kids will have friends.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:They will have one mom and one dad. Yep. And that is a unique role, and it's a privilege.
Tammy Brown:It's special.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:And God has put you in charge. And so back to the last one, even if you decide not to spank, you have to figure out what to do when your two year old, three year old, four year old, five year old is not listening. So you have to figure out how to redirect them. We've all been on an airplane at a bus with a two and a half foot tall human being that is Godzilla destroying everything, and that's a parent who's lost control. And here's the thing, if you've lost control at three, let me tell you, thirty's going be rough.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Because when you raise your kid to be the center of your family, you turn him into the devil. And so what I would say, it starts off by being a loving parent. Now, you've made mistakes, own that. Like, if you've been abusive, if you were an alcoholic, own that if you want a relationship, you know? But I think today, kids today are fragile.
Tammy Brown:Like adult kids.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Adult kids, they've not learned no, everybody got a participation award. We've all grown very fragile as a society, and we're so offended. This is not just happening with parents, this happens with the church. I can love you, pray for you, be there for you for twenty years, and I say, Jesus is a Jew from Palestine, and I lose you. You cut me off because I misspoke.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:And that's just something that we all need to take a step back and say, okay, we need to chill. We need to relax. We need to love our parents and honor our parents. And I know that there are families in our church whose kids have cut them off because they voted for Trump. And what I would advise is maybe politics isn't the thing to talk about in your home, like, how are you?
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:What's going on with you? How can I But pray for even with our own kids, you know, our son came home from college, and there were some issues going on in The Middle East, and I just ask questions? Rather than telling my son I disagree, or I think you're wrong, I just ask questions. And I think it's important to engage with your kids politically and to help them think because school is so one-sided. It's so one directional.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:You know, you hear about that girl from Oklahoma that got a zero on her paper in college for saying gender is binary. She's a zero. So you have to raise your kids to say, Look, as Christians, here's what we believe, here's what we think. People are going to disagree and think differently. I don't know if you remember this, but do you remember my two gay friends, Ed and Tom, and I took you out to lunch with them?
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:I wanted our kids to be exposed to people who are different, and experience that with me as a conservative Christian. And Ed and Tom were gracious, and they did that because so many We talked about this a couple weeks ago. So many parents want to shelter their kids from evil. You need to prepare them kids for evil. And Ed and Tom are not evil.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Ed and
Tammy Brown:And Tom are how not do you in
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:people's Yeah. Do you interact with people who have And this is the great test for America. We have different values, different religions, different beliefs, different How do we coexist as a nation? Those are easier questions in China where everybody's the same race, monoethnicity. Americans love to, well, look at Europe.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Well, until recently, like everybody in Sweden was Swedish, you know? Like they haven't had to deal with the issues that we've dealt with as a multicultural, multireligious society, and those are the debates that we're having, and those are the things that are happening. And so I think we have to ask our kids, you know, once they've cut you off, it's, unfortunately, I don't know that you can talk, but what I would say is, okay, how do I express, like if I was saying something to Madison, she's sitting right here, my oldest, and she thought I was racist. Okay, well, I don't think I'm racist. Help me understand what I'm missing, And would you consider that maybe I'm not racist, but maybe that I have an opinion as a human being, and I'm entitled to that opinion.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:And as an American, I have a say in this. Can we talk about that? And so I think that that's really, really important. It's important to dialogue, and then it's important to come to solutions. Okay, so what is the solution?
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Now, the solution for a lot of kids today is cut them off. I think abuse is a buzzword.
Tammy Brown:That's what I was gonna say. Can I speak to that really quick of like, you know, I'm on social media? I'm on TikTok, and every fifth video is about this very thing. And you'll have different people whose goal is to be an influencer. Their TikTok is represent their YouTube where so many followers and likes.
Tammy Brown:And so they're trying to find their niche. And their niche might be going no contact. So they're gonna give you 10 reasons why Yeah. You need to go no contact, throwing out words like toxic, abusive. Like, we have just, as a culture like, what what should be a 10 on toxic now is like, well, two is toxic.
Tammy Brown:If you're different than me, you're toxic. If you have if you're flawed, you're toxic. If you're
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Yeah.
Tammy Brown:And so I just I like, I wanna say to all of us, I think that we need to be come better at recognizing that we're being marketed to for alternative reasons that aren't necessarily to keep us healthy. Right. And I think that it is such a trend online going to not no contact right now Mhmm. By people who don't know you, don't know your family. It it means nothing to them if there's total estrangement, total brokenness, which could lead to total regret and isolation and lot what what they got the like, they got the follow, they got the click, they're gotten the check.
Tammy Brown:Like, your loss and pain means nothing to them. But we're being so sold on what we're marketed in this way in such a real way. Everybody has weird family dynamics. Everybody has the holiday where you're, like, gearing up in your soul to go because you're just like, I know this person's gonna be weird. And you and I were talking about this on the way in today of just the idea that we've gotten intolerable.
Tammy Brown:Like, I can't tolerate your quirks, so we're no contact.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Yeah.
Tammy Brown:You can't tolerate my quirks, so we're no contact. You know? And I would say to younger people, young adults who like, because it is like kind of in that young adult 20, early thirties where they're going to no contact. We're in a different age now where it's like, do you realize there the gravity of time, how precious it is? And I'm and I just I'm I feel super passionate about this of just your parents don't know what they don't know, and you don't know what you don't know.
Tammy Brown:Mhmm. You know? And some of the things that you're being so upset about that you're going no contact and I'm not talking if if they're abused or if you're abused or severely mistreated or there was abuse in the past. Like, they're I'm not saying there's no reasons to go non
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Yeah.
Tammy Brown:You know, no contact, but I am curious at how easily we're doing that Mhmm. These days. How like the thing about you that annoys me. Like, we've we've lost an ability to be annoyed. Mhmm.
Tammy Brown:Like, if I'm annoyed at all with anything, cut. And that's just not humanity. Like, you're we annoy each other all
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:the Well, I probably annoy you more than me, I think that I think that so much of social media, right, and just entertainment, I mean, you know, there are more movie options on my phone, on my Netflix app every single day than there was in the entire Blockbuster store when we would go get a movie on Friday nights. You know, we would get popcorn with the kids, and we would go pick up candy, and we would pick a movie, and then pay $85 for it because we forgot to return it. So that's what we would do as a family. I'm not bitter.
Tammy Brown:I missed that game. I that game.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:I'm not bitter, but I lost my mind. We bought a lot of movies because we would find it tucked in under the
Tammy Brown:seats Don't in your so movie when you have to, like, please be kind, rewind, rewind, you got charged with like,
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:we didn't rewind it. I know. So I think that just know that two things. Social media influence is all based upon outrage. So I have to say something outrageous in order to get a following, right?
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:And so that's how I grow my following, so I have to be more and more outrageous. And the next thing is, is it creates an algorithm where every, that I think everybody thinks like me. And let me just say this. I missed out on a huge investment. I lost more money than I want to ever admit because I was following an algorithm on TikTok about financial planning, and I got caught up in it, and I thought everybody thinks this way.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:And I missed out on an opportunity. So I'll just tell you, I was going to invest in Meta, and I got caught in this doom and gloom loop. Meta has increased 10x since that thing, and it was so So I just want you to know that algorithms cost you. It costs me financially, it can cost you relationally, it can cost you theologically. Like people rip apart churches, megachurches.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:You know, I'm not a huge megachurch star, but you know, like, there's a whole algorithm just devoted to ripping Steven Furtick apart. Like, just him, his sweater, his clothes, right? Like destroying pastors and ripping them apart, ripping churches apart. You know, I would say most people that leave sandals now, rather than just saying, I disagree, or there's got to be some abuse story, or we just disagreed, or, you know, I mean, everything is magnified and blown up, and it's like, look, we just asked you to, you know, not sit there or do that. And that now is a major confrontation of someone's personal freedom because we're all on our phones being catered to, and we're this little god sitting in our our throne room, and everything is endlessly I mean, you don't even have to leave your house.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:They bring food to you. You know, your shows are
Tammy Brown:don't hate that.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Yeah. So it's all to you. And so then we get in relationships with family where your mom and dad doesn't think like you. They're not on a different algorithm. They're not on social media at all.
Tammy Brown:They have a different experience or perspective. Or
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Yeah. And so and and let me say this specifically about young people judging your mom and dad and your grandparents. Here's one of the things that I've learned that I didn't know until I was 50. I never thought about what it felt like to be old. I just didn't.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:So I had a really hard time in 2021. My grandfather died, my grandpa Ed. He was very close to me. I loved him dearly. I got bitter at him towards the end of his life.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:I felt ignored. I felt overlooked. It was very, very painful. Here's what I never considered. It never crossed my mind that he was battling dementia.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:I just thought it was personal. And so here it is, my grandfather, you know, is battling this brain disease that I don't and I've only had to think about this a lot because now my dad is about the age where I felt like my grandpa went distant. And that's just wrong. And so just know that your parents right. Right.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Like, arthritis is real. Back pain is real. Not sleeping is real. These things are happening. And so as a young person, you're in the prime of your life, and your body is functioning in ways that you don't understand.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:And and you've not you've not lived through the change yet. The world here's what I would say if you're young. The world hasn't changed for you yet. It's changed for me.
Tammy Brown:That's what I meant when I was like, don't know what you don't know.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:You just don't you don't know we were talking with Ethan and his friend, and we were just talking about, I went to a high school with 4,300 students. I didn't know of one gay student, 43 in California. Now, were there people that were gay? Of course. It was a different time.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:When I was in seminary in the 1990s, somebody told me that gender was binary or gender wasn't binary, and I laughed. I was like, that's no one's ever gonna think that. Like, I've lived through, we've lived through the internet change, which makes us sound like dinosaurs, but electric cars were like things of the future, drones. I mean, so the world is changing. Mhmm.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:And if you're young, I want you to listen to me. I feel out of date, out of touch. How can I relate? How can I I mean, these are feelings that I never had to worry about when the world that I was living in was my world? But now the world I'm living in, it's like that show Stranger Things, like that was my childhood.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:We rode our bikes around, like, trying to find where everybody was. The way you knew where everybody was is because all the bikes were in that yard. Yeah. And that's where, oh, everybody's at Tim's house. And so you would go over there.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:But I'm not living in my world. And if you're a young person, I'm adapting to your world. And and here's the thing. As you age, it's harder and harder to adapt. It's harder and harder to change.
Tammy Brown:Well, and you'll we we say things sometimes that we're fine to say that are not fine to say now. Yeah. And young people be like, you can't say that.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:It's like, oh, shoot. Like Yeah. I didn't know
Tammy Brown:didn't realize that. I I played a song, a Christmas song last week, and someone was like, are we allowed to play that? I'm like, oh my gosh. Are we not allowed to play that? I don't even know anymore.
Tammy Brown:It is just such a weird thing. But I I think the thing the Internet has done so much is it points out everything going wrong. And every young person you know, there's a lot of young people that younger people, I don't mean kids, but like young adults that will come to me about their parents with the the things they're doing wrong. And I'm like, well like, if I ask, but like, what did they do right? And it's like you said, we could you know, you and I have walked through deaths with people, illnesses with people, teenagers with people, all kinds of things.
Tammy Brown:And we do one thing they don't like, and Sandals is awful. They had to leave. They're recruiting everyone else they know to leave, slandering us personally, professionally, everything. It was like, but remember how we Yeah. Like went through this season together?
Tammy Brown:What about that? I think we all have to be so careful
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Yeah.
Tammy Brown:Not to just hyper fixate on the the things that someone doesn't get right. And again, I'm not talking about when there's abuse
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Yeah.
Tammy Brown:And terribleness. I'm talking about so many things that can go right or that went right in our childhood. I mean, I have a pretty
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:rough Yeah.
Tammy Brown:Childhood situation.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:I would say really, really rough.
Tammy Brown:And even my kids will be like, I can't believe you're not. Because I do remember the things that also went right.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Yeah.
Tammy Brown:You know? I I just want to encourage young people when you're considering no contact, you know, other options than no contact. It could be limited. It could be boundaries. It could be I don't come to this.
Tammy Brown:I don't do that. You and I had to sort of go no contact with an extended family person.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Yeah.
Tammy Brown:And we
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:We get them twenty years.
Tammy Brown:We made but we made things. Like, if we're doing something, we're at a restaurant. We don't come to the house anymore. Yeah. Like, we had like, okay.
Tammy Brown:It can't look like this, but maybe it could look like this. Yeah. I think no contact should be the absolute last resort. There can be lots of layers of boundaries between a and z. That's just my 2¢.
Tammy Brown:I'm I'm not talking to people who have had honest abuse. If you're a grown up, you have lots of choices in your life about how much interaction, yes. How much you take, yes. How much you let in, yes. But also your attitude, your approach.
Tammy Brown:And I just think that the older you get in life, the more narrow it becomes and the more meaningful you know, when you're younger, you're just like, I don't even need my family. I have all my friends.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Yeah.
Tammy Brown:That road gets more and more narrow the older you get, and family and next generation and next generation. I just I I think we're going no contact. I think sometimes it's necessary and warranted. You guys we have experienced that with someone in our family. But that is the last
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:resort we've been too easy. I would say this. I think that it's cool and popular to go no contact if you're young. So if you're older and you're listening to this, good for you. If you're listening to a podcast, you're you're hipper than you think.
Tammy Brown:So true.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:What I would say is as the parent, it is always your responsibility to compromise as much as you can. And so I see a lot of parents draw spiritual lines. It's like, let's say, so we're a conservative church. If you didn't know, we believe that marriage is between one man and one woman. So let's say your kids come out as gay.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:I think it's really important that you tell your kids that there's nothing that they could ever do to make you not love them, and that you care for them and you appreciate them, but you have this belief, and you have this religious system that is a part of you in the same way that they feel that their sexuality is deeply a part of them. And so relationships are not cutting each other off. Relationships are built upon mutual respect. And so, know, I think that the LGBTQ community has had to fight hard, rightfully so, to not be mistreated or whatever, but I think now it's gone too far. And so a lot of times, I'll see a gay child cut off the parents, and the parents don't want it to be cut off, but somehow their religious beliefs are is hate ideology.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:It's like, no, no, no. These are deeply held convictions, and so we've got to figure out a way as parents because I just prayed with a mom in the lobby two weeks ago when her son came out as gay, and she said, you know, he's cut me off. And she said, what do I do? And I said, remind him of how much you love him. And the truth is God loves him more.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:God loves him more, and God wants us all to come back to repentance, and God wants us all to come back to faith, and, you know, and don't fixate on certain things. You know, I think that that's what, you know, sexuality is not the primary sin condition. The primary sin condition is sin, like pride, you know, I mean, there's all kinds of issues that are underlying there, and we've kind of, as Christians, picked which sins to pick on, and we just need to say, look, we're all sinners, and we all need But there is a sexual ethic that the Bible has called us to honor, and as Christians, we want to honor that sexual ethic, and that sexual ethic has value for us. And so what you got to figure out a way is, how do we as parents love each other when we have a disagreement on sexuality? How do we, as parents, love each other when we disagree politically?
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:And so I think as parents, you can just say, like, your kid, I refuse hate, hate has no place here. And just say like, Well, this doesn't feel very loving to me. How do we make this more loving? Use their own language. You know, I don't hate you.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:I love you. I think differently than you. And just again, and I would say, don't lose hope. And here's what I tell every parent, your prayers will outlast you. And so even when you die and you're in heaven, your prayers are still burning, according to Revelation, or before the throne of God, and the incense is still fresh in his nose.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:And so you may not see your child come back to God, you may not see your child get off drugs, you may not see your child repent and come back to faith, but those prayers that you're praying, even when you die, those prayers don't die. They're still alive before God. And so let me just close with this one verse. As far as it depends upon you, be at peace with all people. I think that is not a quality that our culture shares, and we need to learn to be at peace, even with people that we disagree.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:You know, I can't believe, you know, I went to the White House to meet with Trump, and we had people that were so mad and so angry. I can't believe you would associate with him. I would go to meet with any president. If Barack Obama invited me, I would go If Joe Biden, I would have gone. We are called to honor those in power and to pray for those in power, and that is my biblical concern.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:And I had the opportunity to share with the president some concerns I had about some policies that they had. You don't get to do that if you're not a man or woman of peace. And so I think that that's so important, and you know, people, you know, left or right, or gay or straight or whatever, right, we're all looking for this reason to cut each other off, and it's sin. Sin cuts us off. That's what sin does.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Sin cuts us off from God. It cuts us off from each other. It actually cuts us off from our true nature. CS Lewis wrote this, I forget in what book, but he said, If any human being could ever truly see themselves for who they are and what they were made to be, they would be tempted to worship themselves. That's how amazing you are.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:But you have been divorced from that because of sin. Sin cuts us off. And just know, parents, there's a spiritual world out there, and Satan is trying to divide. He is trying to pull them away.
Tammy Brown:Well, know that young people as well. Young people need to remember that, that it's not just about being irritated or seeing different. There's a spiritual world going on that is divisive and at the very nature, and we have to fight against that by being as much as we can be.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Yeah. And I would just say if you're a young person, you don't need attention on social media, you need real community. You just do. I mean, I'm just gonna say this, you know, and I don't mean this in a prideful statement at all, but I have a video, and I think you posted, I think it's at 20,000,000 views. It doesn't matter.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Nobody cares. Like it's not changed a thing. But you know what does change things? Dan Zombardi in my life, Eric Sallie in my life, my friends. I got a phone call with my brother today at 04:00.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Those are the things that motivate me. Those are the things that matter.
Tammy Brown:You've seen our grandson?
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Yeah. See, yeah, seeing our grandson. We were walking away here, and I'm like, I have not seen him in two two days. Those are the things that matter. Social media attention is a lie.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:It's all a lie.
Tammy Brown:And the stats show that. We're more anxious, depressed, and lonely than we've ever been. We're seemingly more connected. But that's us just talking like old We're gonna wrap it up there.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:Back in our day, we would dial this phone.
Tammy Brown:I walked to school uphill both ways, barefoot in the snow. Alright. So
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown:You actually did. I did not. But
Tammy Brown:I well, I walked in the snow. I wasn't barefoot, though. Thank God. So my childhood wasn't that bad. Thank you guys so much for listening.
Tammy Brown:I hope that this conversation has been meaningful for you. We're excited about this year, 2026. Lots more conversations, lots more topics. And obviously, we're here to debrief the questions that you have. So please make sure that you're sending those into us.
Tammy Brown:But if this conversation was meaningful to you, share it with someone that you think could be meaningful for them, someone that's wrestling with discipline, someone that's been cut off by their kids and got no contact. Please share this with them because the whole point of this is not for us to get more likes and followers here. It's so that we can have a voice and a presence with people and in their lives that we may not actually be sitting across the table from, but we could take what we've learned or what we know to to speak into lives. And but if it is meaningful for you, we would love you to support us by following, sharing, like I said, or actually supporting us by going to sandalschurch.com/support and doing that because we we want to help be part of what's good out there in the best that we can. We're at that age now.
Tammy Brown:It's like, we don't know it all, but we know some things either because we did it right or because we didn't and we felt the burn and had to move forward from there. And then as always, I will hype him up, but he does the studying and the research and has made it his life's mission to know the Bible so that he can share it with the rest of us in a way that helps us know God in a more meaningful way. So thank you so much for listening or watching, and we'll see you next time.
Celeste Contreras:Thank you for listening. We hope this conversation helped you grow in your faith. If you've enjoyed today's episode, make sure to follow us wherever you listen to podcasts and subscribe on YouTube so you don't miss what's next. You can also stay connected by following us on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok for behind the scenes clips, highlights, and more ways to engage with the community. We'll see you next time right here on the debrief podcast with Matthew Stephen Brown.