All right, the 21 convention, Tampa, Florida. Here we are, and we have a speaker who is not only been featured at the 21, the previous 21 convention, so 21 convention alumni speaker, but he's also been on the 21 convention podcast and he is guest hosting on the 21 convention podcast as well. He has a master's degree in exercise science. He's a partner and trainer at Efficient Exercise, and this man is gonna talk about something which has affected my life in a very big way. That is fatherhood, Skyler Tanner, let's take it away. Thank you, Steve. What's up, man? How you doing, man? All right. All right, all right, all right, all right. Fatherhood, first 12 months. Should really be fatherhood, the first 21 months. I'll get into that in a second, but before I do, I wanna give you guys a little tip, a scientifically vetted tip for improving your relative ratio of success in picking up women by 100%. Here's the fun thing about statistics, the absolute ratio, 10%. Nonetheless, there's a book called Subliminal, written by Leonard Launnow, who is a rocket scientist, worked with Stephen Hawkins, and he writes really good pop science books. And the French, of course the French, have done research on the best way to pick up women. In Western France, what they did, they had this beautiful square, and they were approaching women with a relatively simple line, throwing at them, which was, hello, my name is Raul. I think you're very beautiful. I'd like to take you out to dinner. Could I have your phone number and call you later? And if they said yes, the guys would go, oh, it's okay, it's just for science. Look right over there. There's, you know. And if they said no, they go, it's not my lucky day. They doubled their chance, they doubled their success rate by when they said, hello, my name is Raul. I think you're very beautiful. They reached out and tapped them on the forearm. Not creepy grab like you're not going anywhere. Cause that'll double your failure rate to below zero. But it was just a light touch. That moved up to 20% success rate. Very interesting. It's because we have these cutaneous receptors in our skin that link just to the emotive centers of our brain and nowhere else. It totally bypasses that whole rational component. And you'll notice the best schmoozers around the people who are most relational, they're tapped. They tap, they touch, they tap, they touch. That's why. So I'm married. I don't know how I got my trick, my wife and hanging out with me to begin with. So I can't offer you any actual concrete advice, but I can tell you science is determined. Light touch is a good idea. But onto the fatherhood component. So I have a basic agenda here, which is I'm going to give you a little bit of background about the pregnancy, cause there's always the pre-pregnancy. And then there's the actual first nine months, the birth and kind of the first year. And I wanted to talk about this because it's all the things I wish I knew before pregnancy said in a way that I would like to hear them. And what I mean by that is there are mommy blogs. If you Google mommy blog, you get 650 odd thousand hits. If you Google daddy blog, you get like 125,000 hits. And on top of that, women will write a whole lot more about their mommying experience. Guys are sort of like, I changed a lot of diapers. And that's kind of the long and short of it. So it has to be said in a way that you're gonna hear it.  There's cussing, there's jokes. There is a certain guiness about the information. You tend to remember it a lot more. It's like myself, Bill DeSimone who's gonna speak tomorrow, Eric, Dr. Eric Daniels who you'll see speak in the James yesterday, we're all at the bar. And I can remember almost everything we said and we talked about because of the environment it was in. So I'm trying to recreate some of that with this talk. But the disclaimer is I'm not a doctor, nurse, or any medical professional. I may have a degree in exercise science and I train people for a living. But, and I'm also judging or implying that what I've learned and found useful is the one right way. You're gonna see this a lot in parenting books. This notion of attempting to appeal to this notion of beauty, golden, shiny, one right way. It doesn't exist. And in fact, the literature on parenting in general indicates that if you care enough about some of this mundane crap, that's the right thing to do. It's not about the baby Einstein books.  So, first of all, you have to make a decision at some point unless you thought the rhythm method and pulling out was gonna be sufficient birth control. There is no perfect time, first of all. My wife and I decided to have a kid while I was thinking about possibly getting a PhD, fortunately thought better of it. But I was pulling my hair out like, I don't wanna have a kid during this process. And she sort of said, well, if you don't have a kid during the PhD, if we wait until you start, before you start the PhD, then you'll have the second kid during the PhD. There's just, you're gonna have kids at some point.   I mean, that's the idea. So there's no perfect time. You're not gonna find, okay, the market, the stock market's right and the moon is aligned and I still have a full head of hair. Now's the perfect time. It's not, it just doesn't exist. The whole notion of perfection as far as timing doesn't exist, but when we first got pregnant, we actually ended up having a miscarriage. Now, this is actually much more common than is talked about. Most of my clients tend to be women. I talked to a large, talked to them about it and a large portion of them had also had miscarriages, one or even two. It just didn't get talked about a lot. So my dad's 60th birthday. I live in Austin. We're driving out to West Texas and we're going to Marfa. Does anyone know what Marfa is? Anybody? We got one guy. Marfa is, here's my description. If you, anybody from New York City? Anybody, okay. If you were born in New York City and you never left Manhattan, Marfa is what you would think a West Texas town would be. Of course it's not going to have a lot of people, but it'll have art galleries and good coffee shops and all these cultural happenings and concerts and things that don't actually happen in small towns because they don't have a critical mass of culture. Marfa is so put on, but it's kind of endearing that way. So let's take my dad to Marfa. All right, we'll go to Marfa. We're driving out. Five hours later, my wife calls me in tears. We've lost the baby. Flip that car around, drive back five hours. The next morning she had a DNC, which is the medical, I forget the full medical name for, the procedure to remove the remains of the baby. Now, we were 12-ish weeks along. So this might be the, this is perhaps the curse of modern medicine and modern imaging as you know too soon. Some of my clients, they said, we didn't have this luxury. And so we thought maybe we just missed a period or two and just had a heavy period. When really they probably had a natural miscarriage. We had a little ceremony kind of thinking about and celebrating our loss, which seems kind of funny, celebrating the loss, but you learn from it, you feel from it. And you never forget it. But we had to go through that in order to get my son. And so we were fortunate enough to get pregnant a short time later and a couple months afterwards. And it wasn't even the perfect time based on our original decision, but it's worked out beautifully. So kind of a background. And we move into the first nine months. Inevitably you end up with these high-def photos of like soft focus. This is pregnancy, you know, kind of stuff. Little hands, little this, little that. This is what the life starts off as. You're gonna have the monthly photo. Here's one month, here's two months, here's three months documenting, especially now in an Instagram world. And you've got to be supportive of this because here's the thing. If you decide to keep the baby if your wife decides to keep the baby, motherhood begins at conception. It sounds like a right-wing talking point, like life begins at conception. Motherhood begins at conception. Fatherhood does not begin until that baby is born. So you are merely playing backup support during the first nine months. And what I wish I would have known then is the baby might not be here, but if that pregnancy happens during Mother's Day, you damn well better get her a Mother's Day card. Do learn from my mistake because you will never hear the end of it. And as well, you shouldn't hear the end of it. She's a mother. She's nursing that kid, her back's hurting. She's got all this relaxin' floatin' around in her blood in which relaxin's a little, a beautiful hormone that gets the tendons and ligaments to loosen up so the pelvis can change shape for birth.  And then you have to get these types of photos, right? So here's the fun little fact about this. That's my wife, Sarah. We're about six or seven months pregnant at that point. We're outside and we live in Austin. And these are genuine smiles because normally you kind of put on the smile when you're taking these soft focus photos and the hair is all up and wonderful for these pre-pregnancy photos. There's a couple across the street having the nastiest fight ever. Like we're sittin' out in the front yard and they're yellin', they're slammin' doors, they're doin' burnouts, they're screaming. It's like, it's very, very interesting in our neighborhood too. And then about the same time, two of our favorite characters who live in a gentrifying area of Austin. And so there's a woman who always rides by on her power scooter, she can walk. But she rides around the neighborhood smokin' a joint and on her power scooter. So she rolls by like a comedy of errors.  Like if you were Lily White fresh from the suburb and you showed up in my neighborhood, you'd be a little worried but this guy, he'll pull your trash can up for you.  And so he could very well be Flavor Flav, like the guy's on hard times, I know he's lost some of his money. So Flavor, Flavor walks by too. So it's a comedy of errors. So you get these actual big giant smiles. And again, you're playing support, right? You're being supportive. You don't really want to take the photos. But in hindsight, you kind of want that documentation because you've heard the term, I can't imagine what, I don't remember what life was like before kids. No, I can remember exactly what life is like before kids. But sometimes when you're at the heat of just having and doing the days with the children, it can get, you can be like, what the heck was it like not to have kids? So these are like little tiny reminders of what that's all about.   So you will take, we decided we were gonna have a natural birth. And it's a good thing Doug's not here yet, although I'm gonna make fun of him here in just a few minutes. We decided to have a natural child birth. And so in order to do the natural child birth, you get this whole natural child birth in course. And so what ends up happening is they teach you things like baby massage and how to like get your kid to relax when he's being colicky, which is just endless agonizing crying for no reason. Or at least no reason you can understand. And I'll touch on that here in a little bit. So you're sitting around and everybody's pregnant. You've got some like dads who are sort of like pulling their hair out. They're just really stressed about it.  And you learn about how to massage your kid. You're learning all about like, what is pregnancy really about? What is the process of birth really about? Cause how many of you have maybe older sisters who you've kind of watched the pregnancy process. How many of you otherwise know, all you know about pregnancy comes from Hollywood. One guy's admitting this. Two guys are admitting this. Cause most of us it's sort of like, and I'll talk about this a little bit more. It's like, boom, the water breaks. They're screaming. There's a cut shot. It's your fault.  She's pushing out the kid and the doctor's like, please. And so it's like this giant pandemonium, right? Get the forceps. And really, a lot of it is, it doesn't end up being like any of that at all. It's kind of funny that way.  You know there are other ways you can have a kid or as a woman can have a kid. Squatting is actually a really effective means cause it's like, boom, open up the pelvis, push the kid out. You can have, they've actually have this partner assisted way. It's like, if I had an envelope like the stage here, I could kind of hook underneath my wife's arms and kind of elevate her. So it pulls weight off the pelvis and it relaxes.   But this is a legitimate, like the lunge. Put foot on seat, chair, toes pointed back, lean back towards the chair. Be careful with your balance. Look off to the side, push the kid out. They had a whole sheet of this stuff, of ways you, other alternative ways you could have a kid. Things I had no idea existed because I didn't grow up wanting to have kids. I didn't not want to have kids, but you know, whereas my wife was happy to tell you like she was planning baby names and talking about all the things she would do and this and that and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So old man drying his balls right there. So then there was the existential crisis. There's this idea of like before kid and after kid that I've read about before, but I experienced firsthand. So prior to having my kid, I decided I was gonna be the white Usain Bolt because I had, this is the last bit of time in my life I was gonna have to try to, I don't know, do something with it, right? Like this idea that you have a kid and then all of a sudden you're fully in service of your kid. And you have no hobbies or anything else after that. It's not entirely true, but it is what ends up happening. This feeling of I gotta do something before I am now a dad. So I'm pulling my hair out about this. It's like, all right, I'm gonna be the white Usain Bolt and I'm doing sprint training and it's a lot of fun. Or I'm gonna, and what else did I wanna be? I was gonna be the best rock climber there ever was. Like it's just, it's just you're grasping at straws and this notion of trying to integrate an identity of soon to be a father with the identity of yourself as just a married guy or even a single guy. And I went through a little bit of that kind of getting married, but my wife and I had already owned a house, like we had a mortgage together. So it was an easier integration getting married.  And I talked to all my clients who are fathers about this and they all had kind of the hair pulling out experience as well. This notion of holy crap, what is this gonna look like? There's just no prior evidence and experience that you can have, you can be told. It's a bit like Russian literature and I forget who I got this line from. You can read it and understand it, but you cannot comprehend it unless you have grown up as a Russian. And it's any culture, right? Anytime you learn a culture, you're learning from a second hand experience. And it's almost like fatherhood and parenting is a culture that you can look at and watch and go, I think I understand that, okay? He looks really tired and there's a screaming kid and wow, that doesn't look like a lot of fun, right? But then you get immersed in it, but you go through this phase in the middle where it's like the transition, you're going, I have no idea what this is all gonna be about and it scares me. You're going through this fog of war. Now the birth. So, 38 weeks, there's my wife, there I am. Our kid was due September 25th of 2013 and as I had noted, we had decided we were gonna use the birthing center and it was by a country mile the best medical care we've ever had. Just from the environment to the time spent with us, to the concerns, even for me as a father who's just there as like support role, we were really, really happy with that. But when I say birthing center, what does that make you think? Maybe something like a grass hut. So, 21 Convention 2010, Doug's up here being Doug, hold on. So there I am in the ER and some granola head decides they're gonna have their baby in their living room and it comes out with the umbilical cord around their neck and they drop it in my lap. That's confirmation bias. Of course they're gonna drop it in your lap. You're the emergency, I didn't take my kid to the emergency room after I was done and say, hey, doc, look at my great looking kid. Having said that, having said that, it's actually, some people think kind of grass hut and you're gonna squat in a hole and push your kid out. At our birthing center, all the midwives have master's degrees in nursing science and extra training in that and this was actually the room we had birthing or gave birthing and around the room they're actually hooks on the walls because they can provide medical procedures based on how the birth is going up to some level and then a mile down the road is the hospital. They set them up in proximity to those. It's sort of like, it's an argument that often gets leveled and it's totally spurious which is what happens if they can't do what they need to be done? They call someone who can do it.    So we have this kind of wonderful room and a week passes, September 25th is gone. It's all of a sudden October 2nd and my wife is getting really, really infuriated and she smacks me at five o'clock in the morning and goes, today's the day. I go, okay. Now this is important because I asked the midwives, okay, so what's early labor and then active labor look like?  Give me something. I like facts. I like figures. I like poses. So Sarah's getting these contractions. She's getting these contractions and we're walking around the neighborhood and nothing's happening. Nothing's happening. Finally, we go into the midwives that afternoon and they sort of like lay on the table and they go, you're really a face, but you're not really dilated. So here's an important kind of point of distinction. At the cervix, what's happening is there's this mucosal plug that is, when they talk about dilation and being a face, what's happening is your kid's head is kind of hitting the top of the cervix and slowly widening the space. I'm gonna talk all about the vagina later, guys. Don't you worry. Your kid hits the space and it starts to widen the gap and so you can be a face and push, dropping down below this certain point, but the mucosal plug has to give up the ghost. It has to either break slowly or if you see it in the movies where it's like bam and it's a pickle jar and all this fluid everywhere and you're swimming in it and it's disgusting. It doesn't always happen like that.  So my kid's just waiting to come out.  Or she's very a face and not really dilated.  And the best part about it is our midwife, East German, five kids, she's great. Earlier in the pregnancy, she's telling us about you're pregnant, that's fine, keep doing everything you'd rather be doing. She tells us a story about how this one girl comes into her trying to get a doctor's note so she can park closer at UT, like a sick note and her response was, you are pregnant, you're not sick, you can walk. Like it is the idea that somehow the female anatomy and that human beings on the balance haven't dealt with pregnancy and have to do stuff with it while pregnant is just absurd, very kind of Western society. If there's no, now having said that, we have friends who had twins and she was bedridden by like 20 weeks. So there are certain circumstances where that has to happen, but my wife didn't have that problem. So we were still training and teaching and all that other fun stuff.  So about 9.30, my wife starts doing this. So if the midwife had told me active labor looks like NBA players in the fourth quarter trying to catch their breath because you can't talk, you can't think it's the most unimaginable pain, that would have been helpful. So there's a little tip. There's a little tip for you. First of all, active labor is not like, the most painful portion is not the pushing according to every single one of my clients I've talked to about this. It's not the pushing, it's the contractions of your body trying to widen this space to get ready to shove this kid out. So there we are there and we've got the active breathing and we show up and here's why I don't have a mid-husband as it hurt. Can I get you a beer or something? Because we don't know and we can't relate directly. I mean, we can know kind of in an academic sense and having been through it and so on and so forth but their care and their touch and having had kids and sort of going through the process. We get there about, let me see where I am. Yeah, okay. So we get there at about nine o'clock in the evening and we've got that beautiful tub, my wife's trying to find a comfortable position. Again, she's like on the bed.  She'd breathe through these contractions, sit back down and lay there.  I, meanwhile, are trying to sleep and she's totally harsh on my vibe trying to get a nap. To which she goes like, I cannot believe you tried to sleep. I go, what else was I going to do? You didn't want me around. She wasn't yelling at me or anything. She's just like, you can't help, right? What I'm going to do, like help her contract that muscle. You can't help. So I'm lying there on the bed trying to sleep because I know at some point I'm going to be, my marginal utility is rising with every minute, but in that moment in time, I was totally not useful. So I'm trying to sleep. So I'm effectively like Grand Haven Father here. Does it hurt? Okay, I couldn't, I don't know. So eventually where things are progressing, things are progressing, things are progressing about, about 2.30 in the morning. They always say when it feels like, they're telling your wife, when it feels like you cannot go any further that you've suffered so long, that's when the good stuff's about to begin. So I'm like, God, I need a shot. I need, I can't take it anymore. So I go and I get the nurse and she comes in and she goes, well, we need to check, well, we need to check and comes in and proceeds to lay my wife back and go to check her. And in that moment, bam, everything opens up. Finally it gives up the ghost and she screams her out of the nurse. This baby's coming now. So nurse kind of wanders in, nurse kind of wanders in, she goes, get the cart, it's coming now. So she runs off. So the movie's again, it'll have you believe that, like crazy screaming. So what happened in my case is the most painful part again is the actual contractions.  Like, because it's just all pressure and push everything out. My wife grabs my head. She proceeds to kind of park her mouth next to my ear. An unleashes scream that I would roughly imagine is, not like this, like I'm listening to my music and there's my, you know, there's my blood oximeter and I'm relaxing on the exercise ball, but something equivalent to screaming through a bullhorn in my ear with the predator cry, like, from space. It is the craziest sound I've ever heard in my life. It's about double the intensity I've ever heard my wife yell and she has no idea where it came from. It's like a wormhole opened up inside her. She reached out and grabbed one of those monsters from the Avengers and just channeled its voice like, five minutes later, my son was born. So, that was incredibly quick pushing. He didn't even have like, you ever wonder why kids have alien heads. This is why they put a hat on them.  It sort of moves them around. They look like cone head when it's all said and done. There's like a big portion up this way and that way.  This is on my chest, by the way. My wife doesn't have a big hairy chest.  And it's the weirdest thing. So your kid's born and it's a super high oxytocin environment. I'm wearing stage makeup because HD doesn't nobody any favors. But the touch with my kid is like the highest definition touch I've ever had in that moment. Now it could just be total delirium. But this feeling of like, almost like, hey, Jeans, pleased to meet you. Oh, right, yeah, these are, hey, you're part of me. That's cool. And then even crazier than that, after all of that agony, my son's nursing for like 15 minutes right after he was pushed out. And my wife turns to me and goes, let's have another one. After all of that agony, after all of that pain and just craziness, the brain is just flipped and's like, okay, let's have another one. Now in the meanwhile, while all this is happening, the midwife is down there kind of kneeling and like my sonopysiotomy happens when they need to create space between the, to open up the vagina a little bit more. My wife did either do it surgically or it tears. My wife had some tearing on the inner walls of her vagina. So the nurses down there just so in her up, reaching in so in her up and we're just breastfeeding and having a grand old time.  Or like give it to someone for stem cells? I don't know. And to be honest, I don't remember what we actually did with it because I'll get to that in a second. So like eight hours later, we went home. Like we didn't have to stay. Sarah was able to get up and walk. We took Jack home. And then begins kind of the interesting first year. So like I said, it's really should be called fatherhood the first 21 months, not fatherhood the first 12 months. So now my marginal utility really begins. The closest thing I think we are going to get to time travel in our life is the first two months after having your first kid. Because I remember Oktoberfest kind of because my son had like baby leader Hosen. We took it to a friend's house. He was there during Oktoberfest. He was born on October 2nd. I remember a Halloween maybe, the smashed potatoes I made for Thanksgiving and Christmas. But otherwise, nothing. I blinked and it was two months later. It's because you're tired. You're really, really, really, really tired. And I think you're also tired because there's some literature on this about the morphology, the brain changes that go on when becoming a new father. Some interesting things happen.  Because how many of you had a crying baby on your flight coming into, here.  I'll talk about that in a second.  They're crying because they're sleepy. They're crying because of this. It's very, very strange. But yeah, I finished a master's degree in this last, in this period of time. I don't remember how. I did. It was great. But that's the closest thing. I think we're ever gonna come to time travel.  That is something that you will experience with children. There's a great saying, which is the days and the months are long, but the years are short. My son's one now. And it feels like that. It feels like yesterday. It was bored. But if I spent an entire day with him, it will have felt like, like I was on some sort of three day weekend bender. Even though one day has occurred.  You're always on duty, but it's a weird thing. So having a child will cure you of narcissism at least temporarily. Because you realize like, I always have to be on daddy duty and I have to be paying attention to this thing. Like you're doing other stuff. You get really good at multitasking. Like there I am, like chopping vegetables and my son's trying to like turn on the stove. And I'm like, buddy, back away.  And I'm still chopping and I'm stirring this and I pick him up and I'll put him on the refrigerator and I'll be like, play with your magnets and I'm chopping. And then the mail comes and he comes calling after it and he's tearing stuff down. And you're always on daddy duty, but all of a sudden you find this capacity to realize that all of your interests are quite important, but you don't have to obsess about them to get them done in a good way. And in fact, having a little distance from all of your interests kind of lets you make better decisions about them. Have you ever been so obsessed with something that only when you got away from it did you realize that you made some bad decisions along the way? Being a parent by nature, fatigue and having to pay attention to someone else gives you that distance constantly. So you start doing this cost benefit analysis in real time without the emotional component of I really want this to work because I really want it to work, which is kind of interesting because you start applying that elsewhere. If you remove the domain dependence of this is for my kid, you start doing that elsewhere.  Or I think that ACLFest is a great idea, but I think I'd rather just, I'd rather see my friends. Like you start to become very compartmentalized in your decision making. But that first week, you're gonna have what's called this beautiful La Brea Tar Pit type poop. This is in high definition. Again, high definition does no many other favors. So they tell you that this stuff is going to be a few days and it's gonna be a little bit. For my son, it was like a week and you can't wipe that stuff off at all.    Maconium, there we go.  Cause he's been thrust into this world, right? It's a, it's a, it's the existentialist crisis. You are thrust into being and now you have to deal with it.  What's going on here? And like I said, so kind of the nurses go, huh, yeah, it'd be a couple of days. For me, it was a week.  Every two to three hours. And so you get used to it.  So fun little, fun little bit. In the food and wine industry, women tend to be critics and tasters better than men. They possess better olfactory sensory organs. They in fact have a higher rate of what we call people who are super tasters, which is like, I don't know, 4k tasting. I'm not sure exactly what that looks like.  Like it's like Wolverine smelling saber tooth and the bushes off on the side, like your diaper is dirty. And it's not, nobody else can smell it. Nobody else can smell it, you've evolved this wonderful olfactory function from just being around your kid. And it's kind of incredible.  You're sort of like, all right, my kid's digesting food well, that's good.  Okay, I'll just wash that up. No big deal. Oh, it's on my shirt, that's fatherhood. You just don't, it just stops being a thing because you're constantly exposed to it. It's just not a big deal. It doesn't mean, you know, you're like, you're excited about it, but it just stops, it's just par for the course.   And then fatherhood, fatherhood is so crazy. So, you don't, we don't have a visceral experience of like having a kid unless you're an old Schwarzenegger in that movie in the 80s.  And so, fatherhood is weird. We don't have this oxytocin laced, crazy experience of shoving a kid out and connecting with it and having us, having it biting on our nipples every day, thankfully, I'm very, very lucky in that way. And on top of that, early on, you're being ignored, not ignored, like intentionally like, stiff arm by your wife, but you, the baby is taking precedent. Cool, I get that. My marginal utility increases with age. I understand that.  I love this thing. I clearly see its resemblance to me because I look like I have alien eyes and we're in that funny hat. But fatherhood creeps up on you.  But all of a sudden, fatherhood just kind of, kind of sidles up beside you. You're working with the kid one day and just kind of bumps you and goes like, and it leaves. Like, it's like that little, good, good, good talk.  It doesn't happen immediately. In fact, some of my other clients who are fathers talked about that, like early on it's this really frustrating thing because they're not getting attention from their wife. They can't really comfort the kid because early on you're not really a sense of comfort. You don't have the milk and you don't have mom's smell. That's why they encourage like skin to skin contact. You'll be laying there on your chest with your baby in its diaper just on you, feeling, touching, communicating. And now my son likes me more than my wife but that's just a phase. They'll go through it. They'll be like, I want mommy more than daddy. I want daddy more than mommy. So it does come back to eventually kind of pay dividends in that way. You're gonna find that you start caring about things like schools.   There's a term white flight that is used when all of these previous peoples who were occupying the coffee shops and the bars in the city up and leave for suburbia because the schools are better. And this comes with some of that fatherhood element of like, shit, I gotta provide for this thing and I either do it monetarily or I have to do it locationally. You start caring about it in a really weird way. It's not something you chose to care about or even chose to take an active interest in. It just clicks like that whole providing thing. And the thing is, is that the literature states it doesn't matter. I mean, it matters in the sense that if the school is riddled with bullets and I'm, you know, or gun violence or just low performing academics, then yeah, your kid could be at a disadvantage but there's a certain level on which continuing to reach for the stars does not provide any more of an advantage. And in the original Freakonomics book they talked about how parenting, it's not about finding the best school. It's not about finding the best materials. It's not about being a perfect parent. It's about being someone who would so desperately care to try to find those things that leads to being a good father or good parents. It's not about doing it right. You're gonna do things mostly wrong by many measures because you can only learn by doing and then you get better at it and then you get better at it and then you get better at it.   You're kind of wondering what these little creatures are and they are both, they're a little helpless but as one of my, one of my doctor clients said, you know, if they came out and their parts were on the other side of the room they'd find their way back together early on. Like that's, you know, that kid's will be broken and then put back together really quick when they're really, really young but then you've gotta start kind of, you start thinking about this stuff and it's never even entered your world before and it's just a weird concern that shows up.  Really, like, so how many of you have seen Ace Ventura when nature calls? Not all is lost on our generation. This is good. No matter how hung you think you are you're not the size of a baby.  And as it turns out, in our case, because remember that surgery I told you about for the first nine to 10 weeks?   Well, I can tell you that these soft tissues are meant to return to a relatively normal state. Things get back to normal. Now my wife cared enough about total health, she was leg pressing again, she was hip thrusting again. There was some pelvic floor exercises which occur, there's a total aside, there's an all the rage in physical therapy about fixing pelvic floor dysfunction which just kegels aren't gonna be enough.  I've only got one guy laughing, how's that not funny to you guys? The notion of like, all right, let's string up, what was that? They're not old enough, they're not old enough.  This is the type of stuff she's about for vaginal muscle control. So you don't have to go to that extreme, your wife doesn't have to go to that extreme, girlfriend doesn't go to that extreme, but these things come back to normal and we're already thinking about having a second kid.  And then the crying, oh my God, the crying. So before I was a kid, or before I was a kid, I was a baby, but before I was a father, I'd be on a plane and a kid would cry and my spine would light up, like electricity shooting from my tailbone up to the back of my head and I'd be like, oh my God, this kid, I swear to God, this, yeah. And then you have a kid and two things happen. Number one, the only kid who can make that reaction happen is now your kid. Like, because if your kid lights up and cries, all of a sudden you're like, what are you crying about? What's the deal? Because here's the thing, your kid's not giving you a hard time, your kid is having a hard time. Take that to heart. The only way it knows to communicate is loud and crying because common the popular belief, your kids can't talk. Like they can't formulate words and common rational structures and tell this stuff to you, they're still dumb. And the only way they can communicate what they want is with sound and fury. And the second thing is all of a sudden on a plane, those other kids crying, I don't hear them. I'm reading and the kid's crying, oh, that's good, because it doesn't cause a visceral reaction. Another kind of superpower, but then you have a rational reaction of those poor parents because they are pulling their hair out, trying to get these kids to calm down on the plane. And then you're gonna find out that, like, commands don't work on a newborn. Took my son to see his great-grandmother in January. We have three dogs and so you'll see where this is going here in a second. We're flying to Ontario Airport, Southern California from Austin. And in the last leg of the flight, my kid starts crying. Pretty good, right? And I'm like, we're trying to get him to calm down. He's been a trooper so far. And finally I pick him up and I hold him up in the seat and I go, that's enough. And my wife just looks at me and starts laughing. Because remember when I said the command you give to a dog, I'm like, ah, that's enough. And second, again, the kid doesn't know any better. You're just grasping at straws.  Now you're gonna find as kids get older, you're gonna see training dogs and raising kids kind of similar. Like as far as you don't do this, if you set conditional expectations and they know how they're going to be disciplined for a certain amount of behavior, they'll tend to behave that way.  But god damn it, if it's not true that some of those kid snacks may as well be dog food. Like I mean the same ingredients just they've replaced artificial bacon flavor with artificial cheddar flavor, you know?  It's the weirdest thing, it's that next sense. All of a sudden you have this auditory processing, like he's hungry, he's tired, he's got a wet diaper. He wants to go over there. My kid now grunts at things. He goes, ah, ah, ah, take me there dad. Ah, take me there dad. So we walk and we go over there and we go over there. But it gets better and it serves a function.  And then the breastfeeding. So this is an image from a time magazine about this attachment parenting. This kid's like four on his mom's boob there. So my wife is still breastfeeding our son at a rate of like two or three feedings a day in addition to all sorts of solid food. And it's a really weird thing. A couple months ago there was a big brouhaha about Olivia Wilde in a photo breastfeeding your kid. And you really don't think about it as sexual in any way.    Especially early on he's not eating anything else, right? He's just hungry. It's not sexualized in any way. In fact, it's comical because all of a sudden you're reminded of the fact that we are mammals. We can think about our own mortality and plan our futures and all the other stuff but at the end of the day we are animals and we still have to abide by that feeding our infants and having them hang on the udders and feed. Like it is, that's the way it is. Then he starts to get teeth and she starts going, okay your breastfeeding days are not long for this world kiddo. So I want you guys to try and take that away if nothing else. Do you see a woman out in breastfeeding?  She didn't care about you at all, in fact. She cares about feeding the kid, period, full stop. You don't even factor into the equation and that's okay, it's not about you. As long as they're not just like making you accept it like who watches Portlandia? Anybody? Nobody watches Portlandia?  No, it's not that either. It's not that either. Live and let live, kind of like, I'm just trying to feed my kid, good luck with the rest of your day. And so my son is already starting to display components of boy-like behavior. There is a nurture, but there is definitely a nature component as well. He's starting to get into things that he knows he shouldn't and he's starting to give him the smile, like Jack don't do that and he'll be like.    Like, ooh, definitely. And so there is some literature on this. This whole notion of like, oh, the differences between the sexes and children is just societally constrained and that's not true. It's not 100% either way, but for example, there's some literature that indicates that testosterone exposure in the womb alters play patterns of both boys and girls. So women or little girls who are exposed to more testosterone in the womb are more likely to play with trucks than dolls when they're toddlers, when they're children. And that boys also, girls, they're prefrontal cortex thickness, that whole like, you know, I should probably listen and do this and plan into my future a little bit more. That starts to thicken and sort of reach its full thickness about 18 months earlier than boys. So on top of the fact that we are delayed in puberty, right, because women reach their full height and sort of full body at a much earlier age than we do, we also suffer the fact that our executive functioning in our brain is about 18 months behind any girl you meet about the same age. And this carries until full maturation in your 20s. So we are, this is great. Like you want the cocksure 20 something who certainly can change the world. But it's also something that you see at a young age and it's actually nature. It's not like, oh, I just didn't care about my kid and let him play with like power tools. And that's why he's, you know, jumping out of airplanes without a parachute like Travis Pastrana or something like that. It's an element of how we learn. We have better hand-eye coordination but worse, fine motor control. Great for doing and learning through activity. Poor for sitting in the class and working like this. And this is the great debate that originally all of the school was for men. And then it became how do you make a school structure that supports women? And now we've done a really good job of that because there are more girls in college and more girls graduating high school. So now the opposite needs to be done, like boys are not mean or evil and they're not just all ADD that we live in a high stimulation environment. We're in a high definition stimulation environment. So our dopamine buttons are always being clicked. Click, click, click, click, click. You don't have ADD. Your norm is just an elevated amount of dopamine. So all of a sudden sitting in class and paying attention is mind numbingly boring. Oh my God, it's so, ugh. So boring. So this is a camp. I wanna say it's in North Carolina. Time Magazine did a notion on, is called the myth of boys. It's about a six year old article, seven year old article. But it talks about a school in Harlem of all places where it's an all boys school and they graduate 100% of their people and the principal's talking like, you gotta reach them in a way that gets them interested in something. And so they had these guys who were just dragging their asses. They couldn't find something they liked and finally they let them set up a recording studio. And once they had that thing that they were just so interested in, everything else came up and they graduated. They needed to do something actual hand-eye coordination and get up and move and it wasn't just sitting there and studying. Tain to grade all that behavior. So you already start to see that at a young age. My son doing things like, so he's in the tub and he gets up and he'll reach to the toilet and he'll go, crack, crack, crack on the toilet seat. But the first time he did that, he about flipped out of the tub. I caught him and he, ah! Put him back in the tub. What does he do? Crack, crack, crack, ah, ah. Think about anything else you've done in your life. Oh! I'm bleeding. I'm gonna do it again and learn from it. I dislocated my ring finger here when I was 15 years old playing basketball. It dislocated, the ball came down like this and these two digits ended up on the third digit. It looked like a lightning bolt. So I go into the hospital and I'm walking around and the nurse is making fun of me like, what's going on here? And I pull off the ice pack and she's like, ew, god.  They splinted me and said, don't play basketball. What did I do? I splinted, I tied it to the pinkie and I went and played basketball. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm a man. That's of course what I will do. And if you look at the, and if you look at the longitudinal statistics of men, here's the best part and then I'll move on to the next slide, which is, if you look at the death rates, and the amount of death split between men and women for certain diseases, trauma related death, the men are like way up here and there's tiny, tiny little bit for women and then you get to like dementia and Alzheimer's and other, Alzheimer's and other for dementia and it's all women. And there's almost no men. I go, well, this is easy to explain because all of their husbands were the guys that said, hey, hold my beer, watch this and killed themselves in this first graph and then they just kept living and then could die of early dementia later. So you do have to watch out for that but you don't want to stunt that, right? You want your kid to explore. You want your kid to be in a safe enough environment to know just how serious some of these things that he's dealing with are. There's a great TED talk recently about this, how like they intentionally, this guy came up with a camp for boys and like they're six and they're like using power tools and using saws and driving cars in people's laps because you have to learn the gravity of the situation and you only do that by doing it. So, you know, you're supportive and you keep a long leash on them. You don't want to be a helicopter parent but it's not a dichotomy. It's not either you're overbearing or you're totally absent and detached. There's a middle ground of knowing that we all wanted to explore. I mean, you can't help but explore. I was in the desert behind my house as a kid coming back with cactus needles in me and a bad sunburn and running away from animals and all this kind of stuff and he's going to want to do that too and your kids are going to want to do that too and you don't want to stifle that. Girls want to do it too. That's actually, I mean, if you watch them at the playground, girls play just as hard as boys, just as hard. And on top of that, when they're young, they're pretty damn strong too. So at my playground, it's a track. You can hang on it and go like a zipline, like you're some sort of a secret agent or a black ops guy. And the girls are doing it more than the boys. They grab on, they kick their legs and they go flying on the thing. And at some point culturally, we go that's not allowed. That's not what you like. And you don't want to stifle either of those because that's going to set them up for a variety of things later in life. So definitely don't want to stifle that. And then you end up with this. So this was a few weeks ago. There's my wife, that's me, of course. And my son. You get through the first year and you're sort of like, okay, I think I've got to handle on this. But every year's different. Cause now, now he's a toddler. He's almost walking. And that gets in all sorts of other trouble. He's opening up cabinets. He's throwing things out. He is, his teeth are coming in.  Now if you think about this, imagine razor blades pushing through your gums. Cause you don't remember it, you're one.  And that's what your kid's crying about. Again, he's not giving you a hard time. He's having a hard time. And it's just wonderful. It's this very bizarre thing. All of a sudden I can remember what it was like before I had a kid. But I wouldn't want to go back to that. That's me personally. I'm not making a judgment on anybody else. Everybody's got their own life to live. But I did want to have a kid but I didn't obsess about what it would be like like my wife did. And I'm obsessed by comparison. She probably thought it was just normal amount of thinking about having a kid. So you'll have to do these photos and that'll be great because as I said earlier, the days are long, but the years are short.  It was yesterday, he was just born, right? And it's true. It's so cliche, but it's true. And so then the next adventure begins. I could come back next year and be like fatherhood the first 24 months and it would be a whole different set of lessons and you have to understand that your thoughts can't be static in what you're attempting to do and parent and being caring and willing to change and be fluid is the best advice I can give you. I hope some of that stuff was helpful. Some of the stuff I've talked about was helpful as far as thinking about it a little bit more, sort of high definition poop smell. What active birth actually looks like, like breathing, they can't talk to you, they don't want to talk to you because it's agonizing pain. My experience and Steve can corroborate some of the experience we had with having natural childbirth and if you don't want to do that, you want to plant a C-section, that's cool too, you know? But is to kind of be informative to tell you all about it and you have any questions? Anybody got any questions for Skyler Tanner? As gross as you want guys, I'll ask the answer in a little specifics. Skyler, do you believe it's possible to focus too much on trying to be a good father? Yeah, yeah, now there's a period of time where you need to, it's not an elimination, right?   That's way out of balance. You want to think about it like a pie chart in which you're varying the amount of focus for periods of time. I did say like that being a father will cure you of narcissism pretty quick, but at short term, right?    So because there's that initial period of just really high, high touch, high, high, high. And then you start to slowly back away and that's something culturally, this is kind of the explanation of Anthony will like this. What is the 21 convention? Well, early on it was the under 21 convention. It was how do you approach and pick up women? And now it's become, we live in a society that lets you, it's a melting pot, it lets you have any cultural, micro-cultural norm you want. Totally supportive. The problem with that is we have no cultural norm to shepherd us into adulthood, to shepherd us into manhood unless you come from a traditional background, if you're Jewish or maybe you have some other, your first generation and they're still hanging on some of those cultural components, we don't have that. Simultaneously, those cultural components serve not only to prepare the child for adulthood but also to prepare the adult for the child leaving. The bar mitzvah is not just, hey, you're 13, you're an adult.  Get ready. It serves both purposes. So that I tell my clients that the 21 convention is now, what does it take to be a full, complete, good man in America, in the world? And part of that is sometimes putting its other genes before your own but understanding in this case that those are your genes.  You're now passing those things on. You want those things to thrive. That's, if I'm gonna be very biological, the real meaning of life is that. Get your genes on the next generation. Anything else is romantic. Get your genes on the next generation. So there's a self-interest in that but on its face it doesn't look like a self-interest. And eventually it's the piry-oriented self and you're going back to your hobbies at a fuller clip. So, yes, you can have too much of a focus on your children but there are periods of time where it's gonna look like that but in the grand scheme of things it was the exact right amount of attention for the needs of the time. That's the being fluid part I talked about. My second question.  What do you think about that? So there's a couple components that typically the cry it out sleep method is the idea that you just let your kid just wail in the crib is what some people take it to but if you actually read the sort of original proponent of kind of cry it out, you can be present. The idea is that you would give the kid comfort and kind of give them what they want if you pick them up and then they'll start to become attached to only falling asleep on you or in your bed because my kid slept in my bed. My kid still hasn't slept in my bed. He'll sleep six or seven hours. I'll get up in the middle of the night I'll go grab him and I'll come back and I'll fall right back asleep. And he falls back asleep too so that's great. But he's sleeping more and more the night without us. But early on he'd be crying and you're going there like shh shh shh shh.  Some people take it like we're going to the store, audios, bro, you know, but it's not that. That's not what it is. It's just you don't pick the kid up. You don't kind of coddle them when they're crying. You but you're supporting them. Thanks for the talk, Scarlet. I wanted to ask you more about how your relationship has changed with your wife and how that has affected your happiness in your relationship with her. That's great because that's actually something I forgot to touch on and I wanted to. And that wasn't a planted question either.  Thanks, snake oil salesman.  And you gain a new appreciation for not only the amount that she can suffer but just how strong women are that there's this notion of the fairer sex or the weaker sex, not at all. My wife is incredibly tough. And part of being in a marriage means you've agreed to a process. And so this is a kind of a time in the process where we're both having to move through the same space. And we have, we've had to remind ourselves a number of times, it's not, I can very easily get focused on like the finances and on doing this and on doing that and on supporting the family.  And it's easy to think about, I have to take care of them when really it's we are working together to maintain this household with our mutual strengths. What I've kind of come away with more than anything, like I'm attracted to her more than I've ever been before. I am also sure of her capabilities even more than before. And in fact, she kind of is too.  And I kind of feel like it's a bit like that high-intensity touch I talked about with my kid. It feels like my relationship with my wife is strong, but that might not be the same for everybody else. In my case, I feel like I'm in an even better place now. I feel like we could suffer a whole lot in a marriage and go through really, really much harder times as a result of this experience because this has had been a hard time between us, but it's definitely a stressful and you're not paying attention to each other nearly as much. So your ability to come together and really focus on each other, you can drop the other stuff real quick. It's an interesting kind of, you do it. Is there any war happening? Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And sometimes, you know, you'll go a couple of days and you sort of like forget to check in with one another.  So yeah, I mean, she and I always, I've got to live longer than she does, but she wants to live longer than I do. So, you know, I don't want to be married to anybody or anything else. Here's, oh, more dating advice. From an 83-year-old client of mine, he said, he's been married 60-some-odd years ago, you feel the same after an orgasm whether you're with Marilyn Monroe, right? He's 80-something years old, whether with Marilyn Monroe or some other girl, so why switch horses midstream?  So, yeah, there you go. Awesome, Skyler Tanner, guys, amazing speech. Thank you so much. Yeah.


Okay. So, the recording has started. We'll pray and get started. Kiran, can you lead us? Yes, ma'am Seer. Let's pray. Father God, we come before Your throne once again and we want to say thank You, Father God, for all You've done for us. Father God, thank You. Father God, give Your wisdom and knowledge. Father God, go to the subject that we can understand nicely and we can apply it to Your kingdom work. Help us to lead forward, Father God, to upcoming time. All the students are meeting to Your hand, Father God. They are willing to join, helping to join the classes, Father God. Thank You. Rest of the time, submitting to Your hand, take care of every side. Almighty Jesus name, Amen. Amen. Amen. Thank You, Kiran. So, in the last class, we started with 1 Peter and we have looked at chapter 1, moved into chapter 2 as well. So, that's what we are going to study today. We'll continue from where we stopped. So, we'll go back to chapter 2. And I was explaining the background to all of us and saying that Peter is addressing the church of the Gentiles during a very challenging time when there was persecution. And according to history, the persecution only got worse. You know, the leadership was to be passed on to Nero later and under him. Many atrocities happened against those who believed in Jesus Christ. So, these were difficult times. These were times where people could have easily given up on their faith and that is why Peter brings this exhortation as well as instruction. I told us that he talks about how to live out this Christian life in certain settings. So, we will have a look at it. So, chapter 1 as we saw, he pours out encouragement and helps them recognize, helps the people recognize that they are citizens of heaven. However, they live here on the earth and that their reward is eternal, that God has done a lasting work through the cross for them. So, basically he is helping them know that the hope which they have is a great hope and because of that, they should live a life here on the earth which honors God and which is also a very righteous life. So, we will see. You know, he will touch on how to be with, how to serve as an employee, a little bit about the role of husband and wife, you know, things like that. So, he will touch on all the practical aspects as well so that people really know how to live this honorable life which Peter is calling them to live.  He said, put away, you know, works of the flesh, malice, deceit, hypocrisy, envy. So, these things are not good for those who are professing that they now believe in God. So, you know, the life has to match up to the confession which we have. So, that is what he is inviting the believers to do and we also observe that he calls the believers to love God's word. He says that instead of doing evil things, earnestly desire, earnestly desire there would be or actually he just says desire. It's not earnestly desire, desire, but the kind of meaning that this word desire carries is when in Psalm 42 the psalmistries as the dear pants. So, you know, a yearning and a longing of the spirit for something which will satisfy it. So, he says, our desire for God's word should be so strong. You know, like newborn babies that desire milk, no newborn baby will reject milk. In fact, they love to be fed as often as possible and a normal healthy baby will want, will cry for it. So, in the same way, even our desire for God's word should be so strong is what he is telling the believers. And then he goes on to talking about the Lord Jesus that he has become our cornerstone. He also points out that Jesus was rejected by people but he is chosen by God and God has made him the center of our faith. And then he points out to the believers and he says that you are all living stones. So, how does God build the temple? Obviously, the stones which he uses are people. So, we are the living stones and we offer up spiritual sacrifices. So, we do our part and then God is using each one of us to build his eternal kingdom. So, that's the way God works. So, you see that there's a lot of encouragement, a lot of exhortation and he is gently nudging them to live a godly life because so much has been done by Jesus for them. Then he goes on to also letting these people know that they are not lower spiritually to the Jews because the same kind of attention and love and blessings that God wants for the Jews. Now that people are in Christ Jesus, he is giving it to every community and I pointed out that these people were Gentiles. So, in this context, during their times there was a very big distinction that the Jews are blessed, the Jews are called, they are chosen but other communities are not.  So, we saw that beautiful passage where they are told that you are chosen generation, royal priesthood, holy nation, his own special people and why did God do all this for us? So that we can proclaim the praises of this God who has saved us so marvelously and brought us into his light. So, recognize the mercy of God. Even today for us we can recognize what the Lord Jesus has done in buying us back through his work on the cross. So, let's continue from verse 11. In a little more depth we will go and then we will keep going to the following chapters here. So, verse 11 of 1st Peter chapter 2. Alright, so once again here he points out that we are sojourners and pilgrims, so that's like a temporary status.  So, don't get too attached to the world. So, that's the point. He says, apps stay in fleshly lusts which are against the soul. So, he is also pointing out that for people, for us, we have many challenges that Satan brings our way. Mainly in the mind, he attacks us and we might think that giving in to some of these weaknesses will not affect us. It's like saying that a little bit, a little bit. Hi everybody, I hope you can hear me now. Yes ma'am, now. There was a power cut so I just got to speak. Sure, sure, sure. So, it's going a little on and off so please bear with me. Is it fast enough you are able to be in time or is there a lag? Audible man. Okay, then I will carry on. Okay, yeah, I really hope this gets better because the power is going off and coming back on. So, let's see. Anyway, so what I've been saying is that when we look at scripture though, we are looking at this in context and we are gaining the main instructions that Peter has in these letters. As you read the details, there is so much more that we can understand. One thing that we are able to figure out here is that fleshly lusts have a property to destroy the soul. So, let's just say maybe young people who are influenced by ungodly friends. Their friends might say things like, hey nothing will happen or nobody will come to know it's okay, we can indulge in certain things. And just for the sake of pleasure and everyone else is doing it. And with the assumption that okay, I'll get into it and I'll get out of it, nobody will know and it's just like time pass. But you see very clearly what Peter is saying here. He's saying that fleshly lusts, when we entertain any form of fleshly lust, what will it do? It will go more against the soul. So in other words, you could say that it will cause destruction of the soul part of us. So that will be our mind, will and our emotions. And sometimes even for believers they engage in all these worldly things and then wonder, why am I not feeling healthy in my soul? Why am I not able to make decisions or why am I not experiencing consistent, steady emotions? It could also be that one is not these fleshly lusts. So if at all someone has opened up doors for fleshly lusts, then it's very important for them to shut it. So instead of these things, what did he say earlier? He said desire the word. That should be our focus. And he also points out that it is important for us to have a good testimony. Sometimes as believers we say, okay, my relationship is only with God. Now don't ask me to think about people around me. It's okay, whatever people think it's fine. Now this is not about pleasing people because we know in other passages of the Bible, we are encouraged to look for the approval of God. So we are people who want that. But at the same time to maintain a testimony is also very important. Because you tell me otherwise, if we don't maintain a good testimony or here he says, let your conduct be honorable. Let it be honorable especially. Especially he says among the Gentiles or the other unbelievers around you. Now let's say some believer is not walking honorably, living a sinful life, giving into all kinds of lusts. Now if this person goes and preaches to some unbeliever, do you think that they will respond? Like likelihood is? No, because people will look at the life of this person and think, oh, look at you. You yourself are not transformed in any way. And why do you want me to accept this gospel? So that would be the reaction of the people. And that is the important reason why our conduct or our testimony is also important. And by this we are not saying that or project one personality to people outside and be another person. No, but integrity. Integrity is you're the same person. Okay, your attitude, your heart, your character is the same. You're not trying to change it for different people. So if we have that kind of a character, it is honorable before the people. Then the people, even if they have accusations against us, they would look at our conduct and they would know that, yeah, there is nothing we can point out and blame this person for. So, you know, in this manner, he encourages the believer, first of all, know that your outlook towards this life should be eternal.  Think about all these things.  Instead, live a righteous life to the extent that others also should look at you and say, okay, these are God's people. So that is the encouragement that he brings to the people. Now, going into a little more details of how to actually live out this honorable life. Here, you would see that he is asking the believers to submit to authority. So he says, therefore, in verse 13, submit yourself to every ordinance of man for the Lord's sake. Okay, so very important. Whenever we talk about submission, we will again talk about submission in the next chapter. Submission is for the Lord's sake. So when we think that I am being obedient for what? To honor God. Then obedience comes easy. Then, you know, being subject to an authority comes easy because it is, yes, it is for the sake of the authority, but it is also for the sake of God. So that is the Christian way of submitting or the believer's way of submitting. Our submission is first to God. And that is why we have submission to someone that God has placed in authority over us. And look here, he says that every ordinance of man, whether to the king as supreme or to governors as to those who are sent by him. So we have to look at people who are positioned in authority as those who have been, in other words, appointed by God, sent by God, appointed or, you know, like God has permitted them to be in those positions because there is a good work that he wants them to do. So what is God's plan for people in authority? He says the punishment of evil doers for the praise of those who do good. So they are there to regulate right and wrong. So we must not look at people in authority and think, what is this? Why has God even placed them? And also, if you remember, I told us that the time at which Peter is writing all these things is a very tough time. And persecution was happening right before their eyes. And I don't have to recall the kind of persecution that used to take place in those days, beating up people, imprisoning them, taking away their property. So many things were happening, physically harming those who profess faith in Jesus. So in the midst of all this, for Peter to say that authority has been sent by God. It's a very big thing. It's a very big thing. So if they were looking at their authorities as sent by God, how much more we can look at our governing authorities as sent by God. And we see that they are called to uphold the right things. And then we are also told that we must honour all people and love the Brotherhood for fear of God and honour the King. So everyone in the community, everyone around, we have to live such a Godly life that we are honouring them. But notice, he is also adding here love the Brotherhood. So it has to really be from the depths of one's being to love those who are in Christ Jesus. So honour, love, those are the points that he is making. Now moving on to verse 18 here. He says, Servants, be submissive to your masters with all fear. So servants is who? Servants in those days were more like slaves in the authority structure which they had. There would be masters and there would be servants or more like people who are sold off to a particular person and their entire life is over there. So even in that situation, he brings back this term be submissive. What is submissive? To be subject to. And if you look at the translation of that word, you see that it also talks about obedient. Because obviously in the case of authority, there are generally instructions, isn't it? Which are given to the subordinates. So whatever that is, you be obedient to it. That's what he's saying, be obedient and obedience with honour. We'll see that. So be obedient to your masters with all fear. What fear is this? He already said, when he talked about governing authorities, he said, for whose sake should you submit to them? For God's sake. So in the same way, when we are submitting to our authorities at work. Now in our context, we don't really have the slave master kind of a setup. It's more like we go work with someone and then we are back. So they would be. So master is not really applicable for us. But our seniors, our senior colleagues, our management, those are the authority structures in today's scenario. And that's what we are talking about. We can be subject to them and be walking in as per their instructions. And you see, he says, not only to the good and gentle, but also to the harsh. So again, during their times for Peter to say this is something really great because people were very harsh. You can imagine slavery and owning people and so they were essentially zero to no rights. Some to no rights for the workers. But even in those circumstances, he is telling them to be submissive because this is only through the faith which they had in God. So when we have faith in God, we can trust that I am doing the right thing. Even if the person in authority over me may not be doing the right thing. I know that God will reward me for my faithfulness. So that is the faith which he is exerting the believers to have. So just little bit I'm going to back up over here when we talked about submitting to authorities. Now I have a question for all of you. Should we submit to everything because for God's sake, we have to submit, isn't it? But what if the authorities tell us to do something against God? What to do then? Any idea? We cannot do anything because we can submit. But if it comes to the matter of God and faith, we cannot still be respected and honoured. But we are not ready to do what he has to do anything against God, against the word of God. Okay, thank you Thomas. Are there any examples from scripture, Old Testament, New Testament where you see people following what you just said? We can say in the Old Testament, Daniel and France, they were in the king's court only. They were honouring the king and everything. But when it comes to the matters of his idols, they were very strong. We don't want to worship. We will not worship. That's where they stand. They went through any kind of thing. They went through fire. But they stood on a king, but they don't want to worship. They want to worship only Jehovah. You can see like that. Yes, yes. So that's true, Thomas. Thank you for that. And here in the chat, Dave has posted New Testament with the disciples. So you remember, even when Peter and John, they go and they heal that man, the lame man. The gate beautiful. So many things they are rebuked. They are instructed, okay, don't worship. Don't preach in the name of Jesus. So many things. So at that point, they say, you tell us who should we follow? You or God? So we have to be submissive to the governing authorities. But when it comes to an incident where they are asking us to go against God, then we can be very, very clear that, hey, we can't do that. So this is how you would interpret it and apply it. So you have to look at the other passages of scripture also. Here it says, be subject to every ordinance of God for the Lord's sake. And that's how it is. Now for me to examine this, I have to see, okay, where else does this submitting to authorities happen? How did they do it in a time when they were asked to go against God? So when you look at it in that manner, then we can understand that. No, we have to stand up for God in moments like that. Now once again, coming back to verse 18 here, we see that it says, servants be submissive. We've seen that. And not just to the gentle, but also to the harsh. So in case we are working in some setup and people are not that gentle with us, we should still maintain honor for them. We should still follow the guidance, instructions that they give to us. Be obedient as employees to our bosses. Then again, he says, if because of conscience toward God, one endures grief. See again, as he said earlier, for the Lord's sake, what is this? Conscience toward God. So how can one be submissive in such a situation when we are thinking about God and pleasing God? So our submission to our authority is actually because of our submission to God. That's how it works.  You're doing the right things. You're carrying the right attitude at work. But still, maybe one is being bullied at work or one is being ill-treated. One is being unjustly kept at a lower position. So many things happen, isn't it, at the workplace? But he says, no matter what is happening, you have a right attitude. For the sake of God, because of your conscience toward God, if wrongfully you are suffering or you're enduring grief, don't worry. And also he's reminding them, if at all we go through such wrong injustice, please know that God is faithful. God is watching everything. But if, let's say, we are suffering, even though we are doing good, then he reminds the believers and he says that it is a good thing. It is commendable before God. See, what is the use if we do something that is wrong and we are suffering for that? There's no use, isn't it? But if you are doing the right thing and you're suffering for that, then don't worry. Don't worry because God is watching over us. So that is what we are being told here. Okay, let's move on to verse 21. So explaining this further about carrying the right attitude in submission, he points us to the Lord Jesus and how Jesus suffered. Now, all of you will agree that it was very unjust. Jesus was such a sinless, he was a sinless person and yet he had to endure emotional, physical afflictions of many kinds. Was it fair? We can all say no, it was not fair. But he was submitted to God and that is why he was willing to endure the pain of the cross. And in the same way, injustice in our life situations, especially in the workplace, he's saying that if at all it happens, you consider the Lord Jesus. He was sinless and yet he suffered. And also with what attitude did he suffer? No, it's really beautiful. Sometimes we suffer, but in our suffering, we grumble, we blame, we accuse.  I am right, I'm so right and we just want everyone to know I'm so right. You see, God is going to judge this person. So we make a big deal out of our submission. The attitude, we may be doing the right thing, but the attitude which we carry may not be right and the spirit may not be right. But you notice here, it says about Jesus, I am in the passage from 21 verse 21 to 25. It says he suffered. Jesus suffered. How did he suffer? See that attitude which he carried. He was reviled, did not revile in return. He did not threaten, but he committed himself to him who judges righteously. You see, again for God's sake, he went through what he went through. And what did Jesus do? This is a beautiful scripture. 1 Peter 2 verse 24, it says, himself bore our sins. Remember, he has become our sin-bearer. We've studied this in Hebrews. We saw that earlier what the temple worship was able to do for the people was just to cover their sin, but not take away their sin. Jesus became our sin-bearer and he bore our sins in his own body to do what? To take it away from us. Then we are told, having died to sins, we might live for righteousness. So in what Jesus has done, here is another truth which for us as believers we must understand. Now I too can identify with the death of Jesus. So how do we identify? Jesus died on the cross, but I as a believer, I have died to my sins and I now live for righteousness. So that truth has to become very, very real to us that the power of sin is broken. Roman 6 talks about it. The power of sin is broken. So can a believer live a righteous life? Yes, 1 Peter 2 verse 24, it says that the Lord Jesus bore our sins in his own body on the tree, which is the cross. So that what? That we, having died to sin, should live for righteousness. Might live for righteousness. So it is possible for every believer to die to sin and to live for righteousness. So whenever temptation comes to us or whenever we are in a very, very difficult situation where maybe doing the wrong thing is the way out. We can tell ourselves, no, Jesus, he bore my sins in his body on a tree. So that I, having died to sins, might live for righteousness. So I can live for righteousness. I should die to the sin and I should live for righteousness. So we can remind ourselves of the truth of God's word and that's why every believer is called to victory. Because Jesus has already made it possible for us to be victorious even against any temptation, oppression, deception of the enemy. And we are also told that by the stripes of Jesus we were healed. So Jesus has done a mighty work on the cross for us. And now he continues to tell the believers that you were like sheep going astray but now you have returned to the shepherd and overseer of your soul. Or you have come back to Jesus Christ who is the one who will guide you and lead you. So in chapter 2, if you simply want to look at the sections, what are the things that we have observed here? We have seen that a believer should live a holy life, desire the pure milk of the word, put away malice, deceit, evil talking, all those things away from us. Then we are also seeing that God's mercy has made us chosen people. Just like the promised generation earlier that was the Jews. And then we saw how one should be honoring and submitting to the governing authorities. And then we saw how one should be honoring and submitting to the masters. In today's world it could be your employer or boss or team leader or you want to use a different word for that. So we need to do that. Why should we do that? Because we go by Jesus's example. Jesus also was submitted to the Father. And because he was submitted to the Father, he was very meek when he went through the suffering that he went through here on the earth. So in his attitude he did not grumble, retaliate, accuse and do all those things. Instead he went through it with the hope that if God is for me, I am going to come out of this victorious. So that's the way. Now coming to submission in the home context. So now you would see Peter talking about how husbands and wives should really maintain that godly life. And you would see like each gender, what are the kind of responsibilities if you want to call that they should carry. So starting out here from chapter 3 and verse 1, it says, wives likewise be submissive to your own husbands. So same context. Now we must not forget. He is continuing and pointing out that there is an authority structure even in the home. We saw the authority structure outside earlier. And usually instructions, blessings, all that flows through that authority structure which God has established. So coming to the home, he says, wives be submissive to your own husbands. So the authority structure which has established his husband is the head of the home, is the head of the wife, the head of the family, the spiritual head. And the wife is supposed to submit to her husband. What is submit again? Again, it's to be subject to or to follow the leadership of or the actual translation also has the word obedience, be obedient. So that is what it means. Now how can a wife do this? We will continue to see that. But you notice here also it says be submissive to your own husbands. So now sometimes this line here has been misinterpreted and people say that women in general have to be submissive to men in general. So which means that if there are men in the church or men in the workplace, men outside. So by default women you are supposed to submit to any man. But that's not what this sentence here says. It's very clear. It says wives likewise be submissive to who? Your own husbands. So this cannot be used to say that all women come under all men. It doesn't really say that. So we'll see even later how Peter will say that husband, wife, you are heirs together. So it's not so much about God making one better than the one gender better than the other. That's not what it is. It's more about the roles of the gender because we know as far as salvation is concerned, as far as God creating man is concerned. He created them with that sense of equality. So that is quite, that's not what we are trying to contest here. So it's more about roles. So we understood wives are called to be obedient or be subject to their husbands in the family context to their own husbands. Now, to what extent? It says that even if some do not obey the word. So again, going back to the people of Peter's time to whom he was writing this, we have to understand that there were many women from the Gentile background who were getting saved. And maybe once they got saved, they probably had a question, you know, should we continue living with a husband? Should we leave the husband? Or okay, now that I have become a believer, do you think I am in some way more superior to my husband? Or you know, should I preach to my husband? So there were all these questions that women had. And in that context, Peter is writing to the wives and he's saying wives be submissive. Maybe some of you have husbands who are unbelievers. So he also says that even if some do not obey the word without a word, maybe one by the conduct of their wives. So this is not a license to say that, you know, one can go and marry an unbeliever because we have very clearly seen in the Bible that we are not supposed to be unequally yoked with an unbeliever. But if two unbelievers get married and somewhere in the journey, one spouse gets saved, that's when, you know, one is a believer, one is an unbeliever. That is the context. So in that situation, he is saying that if a wife lives her life or he refers to conduct, what conduct? Godly conduct, okay? Godly conduct of worship, honor of God, honor of her house, her husband being submissive to the husband, even if, you know, he's not a believer. What happens? The husband, he says, without a word can be won over. So that's what he's saying.  And a godly life is a great influence. And you maybe you preach at the husband or maybe you don't use any words. He says without a word. So just by the behavior, a wife can win over her husband. So that is the context here that a wife, a godly wife can influence her husband in a positive way. And then he goes on to talk about adornment or the appearance that a godly woman should carry. So he says do not let your adornment be merely outward. So we would also recognize that he's not forbidding the women from adornment. Now for women, adornment can, he lists it out. He says arranging of hair, wearing gold, putting on a finer barrel. So there are some of these things that are pleasurable for women. Women like to do things like that. So what he is pointing out here, you have to look at it in the context. So basically he's saying that conduct is more important than the external adornment. So he's not saying, forget about adornment, that's not what he's saying. But he's saying, yeah, even if there is adornment, what you must concentrate on is the conduct. Or then he goes on to explain the hidden person of the heart with the incorruptible beauty of a gentle and a quiet spirit. So gentle and a quiet spirit, again in continuation to the submissive spirit that he is talking about. So basically he's saying that a wife who is, you know, she's for the family. She's for building up the home and she is honoring God's authority structure of the husband over her. That is what God is looking for. So that is precious in God's sight. So the emphasis is more on the conduct than about pleasing the husband, you know, just by external, external adornment. So now, yeah, there are some people who would say that, yeah, no adornment, you can't put on any, like it says here, right? Hair, what else? It says hair and gold and finer peril and things like that. Not necessarily because we will go to the next set of verses here where you see verse five and six where there is a reference to Sarah. So Sarah, again, if you go back to the context of Abraham's times, Abraham, Sarah, Rebecca, they, in this passage, Sarah is called as a holy woman. Holy woman that trusted in God, but they were also women who used to wear jewelry and, you know, adorn themselves.  So that's not the point. You have to look at it in the context. Basically he's saying the way he told about being submissive to the governing authorities, being submissive to the masters. So he's just saying be submissive to the authority structure of the home. So women understand that the husband is the authority structure in the house. So with this, we'll take a break. We will come back. I'll continue from where I've stopped. So if you have any questions, it would be really nice. We can discuss, we can talk and clarify many aspects. So see you then at 10 o'clock. Thank you.