Episode 2 | There’s no war in Ba Sing Se (Pt. 2) Blood is not thicker than water.

Is there a war within your family relationships? Or better yet, are the people you call family, actually family to you? 

Today let’s dive deeper into this and truly uncover the truth that you have been wondering about for so long. 

"Blood Is Thicker Than Water" – Cracked.com 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome to the Broken Minds Podcast, a space for the brokenhearted to realize that they are actually broken and walking this journey out with Jesus Christ. If you wish to support this podcast, please share this episode with your friends and your family. And download the podcast on your favorite podcasting platform. Also, support us monetarily using the links down below. Lastly, get plugged into our local community here in the DMV. Broken Creatives, a place where we network, connect, and collaborate with our fellow brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus. Use the links down below to join the community today. My name is Mercy, and this is the Broken Minds Podcast. Enjoy!

SPEAKER_00 0:47

Blood is not thicker than water. Crazy, right? We spent our entire lives saying that blood is thicker than water. But that's not actually true. Okay, so what is true? And what is the original phrase? The truth is that not all family dynamics are meant to stick. Look, all because we share the same DNA, does that mean that we are truly bonded family? And it becomes so much more evident when we are talking about the family in Christ Jesus. Going through this series, there is no war embossing, say. Our main goal is to break down manipulative power structures that are keeping you bound to the chains of reality. And guess what? An unhealthy family dynamic is one of the biggest reasons why people are held in prison to abusive family relationships and blood bonded ties. Last episode, we dealt with the war within ourselves, a battle that we have caused because we have not properly handled the root of our lives, whether it was from childhood traumas we have faced, generational curses upon our family, or just an offense we held too tightly for so long. But today, let's focus on the war within our families, and let's dive into all the ways that we can apply last episode's discussion into today's topic. Before we dive into this, I want to bring up a small skit that I believe will show you in an in-depth picture. Very emotional example of what a broken family looks like. This skit I produced myself. And I really let loose on this one. So before we start, trigger warning, what you are about to hear is rather intense and very emotional. If you cannot handle this, then skip a couple minutes. Let's begin. So definitely go check that out. But it goes to say this when we say blood is thicker than water, we're using the term blood in the same sense as blood relations or people in our immediate family. Typically, it's used as a means to shame family members who side with friends over their parents or siblings. And you hear it used by mafia members who want to remind each other that their allegiance to family is all that matters. But if blood is referring to blood relations, then what the hell is the water supposed to refer to? Well, we can trace this back to an earlier proverb, which was that blood, the blood of the covenant, is thicker than the water of the womb. Which means we've actually got it backwards. The water of the womb or our family relationships is not as strong as the blood of the covenant. The original interpretation of the term was literal blood. In other words, the blood that is shared by soldiers on the battlefield makes for a stronger bond than those of family that you just happened by chance to be born into. It was also used to reference blood covenants that people used to make, which involved cutting each other and mixing their blood together in a mere hardcore version of the modern Pinky Swear. I found this article to be very insightful, and you should read up on it, for it brings further context to other misuse common phrases out there. But let's tie all this up in a pretty bow before I expose a critical truth. The beauty about this phrase is that we can now understand why it is so important to choose who is our family. Yes, I did say choose, and ultimately, when you have given your life to Christ, you have created a covenant with God to become a living sacrifice to Him. And this is your reasonable service, as we talked about last episode. But now, now that you've given your life to God, and you've sacrificed the old man, and that you are embedded into the family of Christ, even so now coming into this new faith, you now have a whole new family of brothers and sisters in Christ that will love you and support you, even uphold you when you stumble. The family conversation has always been a very interesting one for me. And one that I've navigated in very much difficult ways. I don't. I'm 24 years old. I have a father, I had a mother, I have brothers and sisters, I have cousins, uncles, aunts, I have everything that is inclusive of a family. But do I truly believe that those people are my family? Coming into faith when I was 18 years old, now I have I have a new family. Brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus. But coming for myself, making that decision for myself to follow God, now I have this new family. And all throughout my life, I have found this revelation that blood-related family is not the full scope or the full definition of family. There is a giant divide in my family between one side to the other, split down the middle. And to be honest, when it comes to my mother's side of the family, I know not one person. A lot of people might know me, but from my point of view, I do not know one person. So in in the in the in the world, wherever these people are, if they were ever to reintroduce themselves to me as my aunt, my uncle, my cousin, will I give too much to that relationship? You haven't watched me groan over the last 24 years. You haven't even watched me grow in over the last five months. There's many decisions I've made in the last three weeks that you haven't seen. You haven't been in the you haven't been in the trenches with me when I was going through my mental health dilemma before between the ages of 15 and 18. You weren't with me when I gave my life to Christ at age 18. You were not even with me when I was struggling with suicide at age 17 years old. And can I be even more controversial? Even your immediate family, sometimes those even even those people are not your true family. There's a lot of people who stick to these abusive relationships, these family dynamics, these power dynamics, and say, This is my family. This is my family. But truly, these people are not blood. We're gonna talk about this in the next episode a lot, but I think about it in terms of the church. A lot of churches want to present this idea of family, and yes, we are brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus, although there's a separation between that and how church culture perceives family and goes about implementing family. And a lot of church cultures cultivate this family aspect, and truthfully, we're not family, they build up these these boundaries and these walls and all of this stuff to say that you are under me, that I have authority over you. And truthfully, people people fall into these traps, and it's like, no, these people aren't truly your family, these people are not your mother, your brother, your sister, these people are not your unc, your uncle, your aunt. These people are holding you under a manipulative trance, and they're using the view of spiritual and physical family to hold you, and this that's the same thing as a natural family. I honestly believe that a lot of families, a lot of dynamics that people are in, whether it's their actual blood DNA related family, they are in he they are in these homes, these houses, these realities, and it's like, oh, that might be your blood-related father, but that person has not that person has not been a father figure to you for 5, 10, 20, 30 years. I will honestly say this. And when it comes to my immediate household, I have no problem with my family. I love my family, my DNA family, but as controversial as it is, I know people who are closer to me and who know me more than even my DNA family, the family that I was born into. I know people who have struggled with me, who have watched me go through the fire more than the people who are in who have my family name. So when it as a general rule, when it comes to me, no, family don't mean nothing. Blood relations doesn't mean anything to me. If you want to be my sister, you if you if you want to be my sister, and not only just a sister in Christ, just my sister. It only takes love, respect, dedication. That's it. You show that continuously and genuinely, not being fake, not being phony, because I will know. And after a while, you are my sister. Not my sister in Christ, because if you have accepted Christ into your heart and confessed with your tongue, you are my sister in Christ. But I'm talking about my blood-related sister. I have a brother who's out there. He doesn't share my DNA, he doesn't know any of my family members, but that man, he will be the best man at my wedding. That man will be the best man at my wedding. Why? Because he has genuinely showed up for me. So I want to ask you this one question. Is there a war in your family? And if so, what are you going to do about it? Because at the first at the first half of this conversation, I want you to understand what real, genuine family is and what it looks like and what it does not. I know people in my life who share my DNA but know absolutely nothing about me. They are not in my life today. And I even know people in my life who are like in my immediate family circle, but they don't know me as well as some other people that don't even share anything with my family. But to answer the question or to prolong the question, is there a war within your family? And to break the statement, there is no war in Ba Singh Se. I want you to understand this. You need to analyze your family, and you need to figure out is the current power structure in your family how it's ran, is it good soil for you to take root and for you to grow? Last episode, we were really depicting ourselves as a tree from the roots all the way to the fruit that we produce, and we can literally identify what is the root of ourselves from going to the fruit all the way down to the root. If you want, if you are lost in life and you do not know what is going on in life, like unfortunate thing after unfortunate thing is happening to you. Go to what you are producing, go to the fruit of what you are producing, and from that follow it all the way down to the root. And what is the root? The root are is the thing that is not consciously present. It is the behind the scenes of your life predominantly uh presented in childhood trauma. And if you were to sit down and understand the root of you and where you are rooted in, then your fruit will start to change. Because your life will start to change, your experiences will start to change, your motives will start to change, and then your fruit will start to change because your fruit is determined on the root. We understood in Matthew 7 16 that not a good tree can produce bad fruit, and not a bad tree can produce good fruit, and that the bad tree or the disease tree rather will be cast into the fire. So we we want to produce good fruit, do you? But taking that verse and just saying, Oh, let me just produce good fruit tomorrow, it doesn't happen like that. You have to get to the root of yourself. So I want you to think about your family. Who do you claim is your family? One. Who is your actual family? Two. And number three, which group or combination of groups will you be taking into the rest of your life for? Because wherever you are rooted in, it will produce fruit in your life. And that's either good or bad fruit. Not I'm not saying fruit as in, oh my gosh, any family structure you're in, it's gonna produce apples and oranges and da da da da this and da da da no no no no no no no. Whatever is your current view of family right now, you will ultimately be producing that fruit. So if it's poverty, you will eventually be producing poverty, which is anoxymorphic. That's crazy. Um, if it's success, if your family is successful and like one of your great-great grandfathers broke the generational curse, and now your family is very prosperous and you're living lavish, then cool. Stay that way. You are producing good fruit. If you're always warring with your family, then something needs to change, and you need to identify the root cause of what's happening. Whether it's a dynamic between yourself and your father, a dynamic between yourself and your mother, a dynamic between you and the siblings, a dynamic between you and the cousins, whatever it is that's producing such bad fruit in your life and in their life, you need to go back to the root and say, hey, apologize wherever you need to apologize. Repent wherever you need to repent. And watch God change that situation. The reason why there is no war in Ba Sing Se that phrase fits so nicely here is because in the animated TV show Avatar Aang the Last Airbender, there was a city called Ba Singsei, and this city had citizens within the city, and outside of the city war walls, there was war. The Fire Nation attacked all other lands, all other tribes, all everything. The Fire Nation was on top. But the thing about it is, the city of Bas Singsei was so strongly fortified and so strongly built out that they still had ultimate control within the city gates. So they told their citizens, oh, there's no war in Bas Singse. They brainwashed their citizens. There's no war in Bash, there's no problems, there's no issues here. There's no issues in this family. There's no problems in this family. There's nothing wrong with this family. You have a problem with this, then you're the problem. You see where I'm going with this? Sometimes family structures can be the city of Boston say. Where we are in these family dynamics, and it's like no one can question anything at all. There's no accountability, there's no addressing any problems. We just have to sit down and accept the fact that we live in a broken family. And guess what? That is the root of you. So now, therefore, you will produce fruit in your future. It will be a broken family, and your family will be broken. This is why I wanted to bring this series up. There's no war in Basing Sei. Because the last episode we were talking about the war within ourselves, and we were talking about breaking down the walls that we ourselves in our own mental, our own mental world have built up. Oh, we're too insecure, we're too this, we're imperfect, we're like all this different, all the lies of the enemy to trap our true nature, who God has truly made us to be within this city, and say, Oh, there's no war in Boss Singsei. There's no war in Boss Singsei. There's nothing wrong with me. Whole time you're dealing with pride, whole time you're dealing with guilt and shame of you being inadequate to be a member of society, whole time you're dealing with all this stuff that's warring against you. But there's no there's no there's no war in Bossing Se. No. The same thing with our families. We need to identify what is the main issue in this family. Because it is completely it is completely absurd to just live out the view, oh, there's nothing wrong in this family. Well, this family is exactly how it is. It is what it is. Whole time you have enity with your mother, your father, whole time you're fighting with your siblings, whole time you don't know where your uncle is. And for the majority of cases, many homes are without fathers. I want to I want to be a thorn in your side to think about your family right now. What are those relationships looking like? Because if I be honest, we can no longer avoid the elephant in the room. I've had some family conversations and our recent family conversations, it's kind of like, okay, I've had to be the bold one to speak up. And my thing about it is at the time that I had these conversations, I'm 23 years old. Who the hell is gonna listen to a 23-year-old? And I really honestly genuinely think that is what my family thinks I am. Like seriously, but my thing about it is, y'all, I'm seeing the same repetitive things happen over and over and over and over and over. And I'm trying to tell these people, hey, we keep getting in this repetitive cycle. Do you not do you guys not see this? And every time I bring this up, it's like, oh, well, you don't know this, or you don't know this. Well, you're you're not old enough. Once you get old enough, you'll know this. And oh, Joey, you're not that, and I'm like, I don't care. I I grew up in the same house that you did. There's nothing about life that you haven't learned that I don't at least have a precept of. I probably don't have the full scale that what you have learned, but I at least have the thought, the knowledge of oh, maybe he went through this. Maybe that's TMI. Maybe I'm still struggling with my own family dynamics. But my thing about it is, I do not care. My thing about it is I hate to see my family go through the same repetitive natures every single time when there is a route to be resolved, and the route that needs to be resolved cannot be resolved by by by anguish and fighting, an ignorant play of words, and force, but one of love, understanding, compassion. That's me, and I'm not gonna sit up here and say that there is no war in Ba Sing Sei. No, there is definitely war in Ba Sing Sei here. Every family is going to have war in Ba Sing Sei, even you starting your new family, there's going to be war. There's gonna be war within your marriage, there's gonna be war within you becoming uh a father or a mother, there's going to be war. But God has given us the instructions within his word of how we are to act, at least how we are to act as a church, as a body, and this kind of kind of segues into our next episode where we talk about the war within our church. But I kind of want to just take us to Titus 2, and I want us to understand and really slowly go through this. I'm I'm not gonna read this fast, I'm not gonna read this fast at all. I'm gonna go verse by verse. Titus 2 is 15 verses, it's not that long. But Titus 2 in our Bible gives us a clear example of how the family of Christ, aka the church, should act as a unified body. And it begins as saying, But as for you, teach what accords with sound doctrine. Older men are to be sober-minded, dignified, self-controlled, sound in faith, in love, and in steadfastness. Older women likewise are to be reverent in behavior, not slanderers or slaves to much wine. They are to teach what is good, and so train young women to love their husbands and children. To be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind and submissive to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be reviled. Likewise, urge younger men to be self-controlled, show yourself in all respects to be a model of good works, and in your teaching show integrity, dignity, and sound speech that cannot be condemned, so that an opponent may be put to shame having nothing evil to say about us. Verse 9 says, Bondservants are to be submissive to their own masters in everything, they are to be well pleasing, not argumentative, not peripherating, but showing all good faith, so that in everything they may adorn the doctrine of God, our Saviour. Verse 15 caps this off beautifully. Declare these things, exhort, and rebuke with all authority, let no one disregard thee. So I really want to bring this up because this literally gives us a guidelines of what we can do to shift the narrative within our families. If there is a difficult relationship between you and your father, maybe it's time to pray over your father, to intercede on the behalf of him, so that he will embody a sober-minded, dignified, self-controlled, sound in faith, in love, and in steadfastness, that he will embody that. If it's the other way around, if you are a father, or if you are a father figure, and you want to, you you don't like this broken household that you're in, and you don't want to just say that there's no war in Bossing say, there's nothing happening within my family, there's nothing happened between me and my son, or between me and uh a son that I've taken on. Verse 2 really addresses you older men, that's you, are to be sober-minded. Are you sober-minded? Dignified, self-controlled, sound in faith, in love, and in steadfastness. Verse 6, jumping down to verse 6, likewise, urge younger men to guess what, also to be self-controlled, show yourselves in all respects to be a model of good works, and in your teaching, show integrity, dignity, and sound speech that cannot be condemned, so that an opponent may be put to shame having nothing evil to say about us. Now, I want to address something. A lot of people in church spaces and just the Christian realm, they feel as though that they can also be sided with the world in some aspects. Like, it's all about a conviction conversation where some things don't convict them and then other things are a hard conviction to them. Like, for example, sex before marriage. That might be a hard conviction. No, I'm not gonna do that. But swearing, you know what, I can drop a couple F bombs every once in a while. Being disrespectful, you know what, I'm just being a little petty. That's fine. You know, calling people out their names, you know, it happens, whatever. You know, drinking a little too much, yeah. But my thing about it is, Titus 2 literally says, sound in speech that cannot be condemned, so that an opponent may be put to shame having nothing evil to say about us. I have this, I'm I'm I am in absolute unbelief that a lot of Christians think that they can just get away with a lot of things that that don't necessarily convict them. And I was thinking I was talking about this, I was bringing this up in a in a recent Bible study that I was at, and I I beg the statement well, us living any lesser than Christ-like culture really dulls our representation of Christ. Like if I were to get up on this podcast right now, and I brought this example up on the last episode, and I let's bring this in. If I were to say, if I were to just say the F-word all over this conversation, all over this episode. And some of you know me, and some of you might not know me, but for those of you who really don't know me and are listening to this episode for the very first time, it it kind of degrades my representation of Christ. Like you wouldn't trust listening to me on a week-to-week basis. Why? Because I use swear words. I mentioned on the last episode that as a young teenager, I was very, very disrespectful. And I'm still, there's still a lingering bit of pettiness about me. Like, it look, if you want to be, I can go petty for petty. I really can go petty for petty. If you if you want to do that, we can do that. But my thing about it is over the years, God has grown and purified me to where that is not at a hundred percent anymore. Because if I were to get up on this podcast, and honestly, if you were to receive me in real life, and it's like, yeah, Joey's very disrespectful. Like, he uses cuss words. Doesn't that dole down my representation so that an opponent may have the upper hand and have something evil to say about us? Us Christians. There's a scripture in the Bible that, in my opinion, is it. This scripture scares me. I I stay, I sometimes I just stay up at night thinking about this scripture. And it's Matthew 7 21. And for all the Christians that say that they can play both roles, that they can have a foot in the world and a foot in Christ, and and you know, they're kind of swaying the this Christ-like culture, just swaying it to the right a little bit, and just kind of adding it, you know, just kind of being a little chill and lax with a couple things. This scripture is for you. Actually, furthermore, Revelation 3.16 is also for you. But this scripture sets up for Revelation 3.16. This scripture is Matthew 7.21, ESV version. It says, Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day, many will say to me, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and cast out demons in your name and do many mighty works in your name, and then I will declare to them, I never knew you. Depart from me, you workers of lawlessness. There's two things here. First of all, this scripture proves that the name of Christ is over all. Why? Because Jesus Christ is Lord. Point blank period. I don't know if you're realizing this right now. These people did not do these miraculous miracles in the name of Buddha, in the name of Allah, in the name of all these other gods. They did not, they did not do any of these works in the name of these gods. They did these works in the name of Jesus. There's a a principle that I really want you to grasp here because it's going to be very important for next episode. I say this all the time. Not everything under the Christian umbrella is God ordained. Meaning, you can be in church spaces hooting and hollering and running around, and miracles can actually be taking place. But yet, some of you, or all of you, or most of you, or a minority of you, can still be at subject to Matthew 7 21. And I just want to say, you need to use discernment. Not all the times when you're in church spaces that you see these healings and these miracles and these prophecies coming true, that body is fully dedicated to God, and the name of Jesus Christ is over that body. Because the people came up to Jesus and say, Haven't we done all of this in your name? But still the Lord Jesus said, Flee from you. I never knew you, you evil people, some translations say. So coming to the end of this episode, I really want us to grasp that family is a big thing. And following Titus 2 is a big thing. In Matthew 7, 16. We need to know that one of these days, that when the Lord Jesus Christ comes, he will not look at our faces and say, flee from you. I never knew you. We need to address the war in Bossing say that's warring against our families, because there is one. You can't just sit around and Say there's no war in Basing Sei whole time that you're dealing with family relationships that you swear that you'll never heal from, that you'll never talk to that father again, that you'll never talk to that aunt again, that you'll never talk to that sibling again, that you've cut ties with them. Look, I've said earlier in this episode that not all blood-related family is your real family, but plot twist. Sometimes that end is from your unforgiveness towards your family. Sometimes there's actually a resolve that you can implement to fashion good roots again. Sometimes you can till the soil and plant seeds. And when I tell you, my god, there is a war within our churches. But I really want everyone to get the understanding that last episode we talked about the war within ourselves. This episode we talked about the war within our families. Next episode, we're gonna talk about the war within our churches. It is the enemy's plan to absolutely throw us for a train wreck in ourselves, in our own boundaries, in our own emotions, and throw us completely off. And it just and then for that to bleed into our families, and for that to destroy the family dynamic. And if we could take the family, he already has the church, he's inching up the ladder to destroy, to kill, to steal, and we need to fight back. We need to say, no, there is a war within myself, in my mental health. There it there are childhood traumas that I have been avoiding. There are things in my life that are causing the fruit to be produced as evil. There are issues in my life. Yes, there is a war within my family, there are wars between me and my father and my siblings. There's this and that and that and this. There is an issue that needs to be addressed here. And then further on to the church. No, there is war within this church. Matter of fact, such a vast community, there will always be war against the church. And we need to be fully equipped and capable to address these things. Titus two and fifteen, it says, declare these things, exhort, and rebuke with all authority. Let no one disregard you. Titus two teaches us a roadmap that we can follow in our churches and in our own families. For our older men, for our fathers, for our grandfathers, for our uncles. To be men who are sober-minded, dignified, self-controlled, sound in faith and love and in steadfastness. For our mothers, our grandmothers, our aunts, to be reverent in behavior, not slanderous or slaves to much wine, to teach what is good and train our daughters, our nieces to love their future husbands and their future children. To be self-controlled, working at home, kind, submissive to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be reviled. For our sons, for our nephews, to be self-controlled. And as our fathers and our grandfathers and our uncles are teaching, for them to show themselves to be a good model of good works. And in your teaching, integrity, dignity, sound speech that cannot be condemned, so that no one can say anything evil about us. This is the model, this is the family model that we should emulate and that we should follow. Because if we don't, there will always be a war, in Bossing say. Thank you all for listening to this newest episode. Next time we're gonna be talking about the war within our churches. You do not want to miss that episode, so make sure you follow the podcast, share with your friends, drop a review down below, and if you feel motivated and partnering with the Vision of Broken Minds Podcast and ultimately broken minds co, here's our vision. We want to create a space for the brokenhearted to realize that they are actually broken and walking this journey out with Jesus Christ. So here's how we're gonna do that. For those of you who are healed, that you have overcome your childhood traumas and all that in your life, we want to partner with you to create podcasts to show people that true healing is only one step away. And for those of you who are still on that journey, we encourage you to stick around, interact with all the other podcasts on this network, be included in family, because this here is true family, and also if you are in the DMV area, I want to include you into my family, the people that I have called home. So if you're in the DMV area, especially Maryland, you can come to the living room coffee house in Ellicott City, Maryland. That is the place where true family is built and true family resides. But lastly, if you want to support the platform, all information is in the links down below. If you want to donate to the ministry, you can do that using the links down below. If you want to be a part of the podcast, you want to be on the podcast, you want to tell your story, maybe how you have overcome a broken heart, how you have been in a broken family, you can come on this podcast and tell your story in the link down below. You want to get connected to me in any other way? It's all in the link down below. But I love you guys. I'll see you in the next episode. We're gonna be talking about something rather, rather controversial. And the Lord had to hold my hand on this one because I was going to jump right into this, but the Lord was like, nah, pace yourself. But I'm excited for it, so I will see y'all in the next episode. Love y'all, peace.