Herbert W Armstrong

   Thirty-three years ago, my wife and I were planning our marriage, looking forward to the years we would have together, not knowing, of course, what to anticipate, young, eager to learn. And we have indeed learned a lot. Thirty-one years ago, we began to have children. And in our case, our first child was a daughter. Our family was to grow over the next few years, and we were to have three more daughters and sandwich a son in there in the middle. So he and I were outnumbered considerably by the female of the species, and I took it by that that God wanted me to learn a lot about women, how they think, how they do. And I guess I've spent some years trying to learn those kind of things. I was more or less forced into it by being surrounded by the female of the species. And it wasn't always easy to learn.

   Of course, any of you, as your years have gone by, have done those kind of things too, I'm sure. But I do have to at least count that as a blessing. I know most men have kind of heard from their fathers, or heard it from their fathers, or heard it from their fathers. An old saying, a line that goes something like this: your father would tell you, "Son, you'll never understand women. Don't even try. You'll never understand women." And so there's been sort of a mystery, it seems, surrounding understanding one another.

   Women, on the other hand, were often taught by their mothers who were taught by their grandmothers that men are brute beasts. And so we've grown up with women thinking men are a set of brute beasts, men thinking women, you can't understand them, they're mysteries shrouded in enigmas, and you just don't know what's happening.

   I don't think either of this is true, and I think we have a scripture in the Bible that, if we isolate one little part of it, which is the title of the lecture this morning, it's found in I Peter chapter three. You find that I don't think that was God's intent in creating us the way He did. He didn't intend for us not to understand each other.

   I Peter chapter three, and this is perhaps better understood for titling my sermon today out of the King James edition of the Bible rather than one of the more modern translations. I Peter chapter three and verse seven. And remember, we talked yesterday about how when you see an admonition to a male, if you're female, you just turn around and apply it to yourself and vice versa. See how the scripture or principle applies to you.

   Here in I Peter 3:7, we're admonished, "Husbands, dwell with your wife with understanding. Live with your wife, treat her with respect. She is the weaker partner." And we talked just a little bit about that yesterday, how in principle, as a generalization, we're talking here only about physical strength, muscle tone. I'll get into that a little bit later on. But the point I want to emphasize here is that in the Bible we are instructed to dwell with understanding.

   Now that says to me that there is a capacity that we have as individuals to understand one another. It also says we're different from one another, that God did not create us the same. God did not exactly clone Adam when he made the woman. We were talking yesterday about how we were made to fill in the gaps with each other, how we each have strengths and weaknesses that when we put ourselves together, we make a stronger whole than we could.

   I had a little section on the World Tomorrow television program a few months, a few weeks ago now. Maybe you remember seeing it at the little commentary section we do at the end. I called it "Math and Marriage." So if you read about marriage, you learn that there are different ways to view things, different expressions to use. And over the years, writers and counselors have put together little sayings, and some people see it one way and some another. You put them all together and you have kind of a cute little scenario that I put together in the commentary.

   But one of the counselors I've read on some occasions talked about how when two people marry, it's not just two plus two equals four — one plus one, excuse me, one plus one equals two. It's two raised to the power of two. It's twice as powerful a force. As when you just look at it one plus one equals two, you look at it two raised to the power of two makes four, so it's considerably more powerful force in life when you dwell together. When you form a union of a husband and a wife, you are twice as strong as any one of us could be as two single individuals, even working in tandem. That's how strong the marital bond is. And I thought that was a pretty good way to view it, to word it, to think about it.

   Well, as the years have gone by and we grow in maturity and wisdom — I hope at least we do, all of us — you come to see that this dwelling together with understanding is a very important part of life. Dwelling together with understanding, it is perhaps one of the important ways, important keys of holding together marriages, of growing together.

   Now that means we have a certain kind of understanding that we need to know: that there are differences. When God presented Eve to Adam after he had taken Adam's rib and made of his very bone and his very flesh this suitable helper for each other, put them together, there were obvious similarities. Adam found, as we talked about last time, that he had no comparable or suitable help when he viewed the entire creation that God had laid before him until Eve was created and presented together Adam and Eve, then they found comparable, suitable needs and help.

   Now there were obvious similarities. Here was one of the same species, of the same mental capacity, of the same ability to relate, a companion completely and in every way suitable and equal to each other. But of course, with some extremely notable differences.

   Those noticeable differences were first of all physical. We might say therefore sexual, the physical sexual differences. There was the male and there was the female, and they obviously could see those differences instantly upon their presentation to each other and what we often view as that first marriage ceremony.

   So as they begin to dwell together, they must have immediately seen, however, that while there were many similarities, while they had the same mental capacities and they had so many of the same kind of facilities for each other, there were no doubt at the beginning notable differences that they could discern in one another.

   And you now spend your life in marriage because when Adam and Eve were created, they were mature young adults. No one knows at what age they were created, but let's just assume for the sake of the argument they were in their twenties. That would be logical as opposed to being, you know, thirteen or fourteen — that doesn't probably make good sense, nor does it make good sense that they were, you know, sixty or ninety. But of course they lived for, you know, hundreds of years in those days. It was a different kind of situation.

   But let's assume for our comparison they were in their twenties and that they would then grow in maturity, spending their time together, and they had to learn about each other. So we don't need to view God's creation as mysterious and not capable of being understood, but rather try to spend our lives in marriage learning what each other is all about, learning what the opposite sex does and thinks.

   I think another important reason — I didn't put it in yesterday's lecture, but let me start off with a thought to kind of tie yesterday into today — another important reason God created marriage is because we were, it seems to me, created with a certain inherent selfishness. We are very concerned with self. I guess that's just the natural law of the way we're made. We are inherently, it seems to me, basically selfish people.

   And one of the very important lessons of life we learn in marriage — you learn it lots of other ways too, but certainly in marriage — is that we spend our lifetime learning to be unselfish. Most people, to be really frank, never get out of that. They spend their lives being selfish. But if you understand that you're to spend your life dwelling with understanding with your mate and learning to be unselfish, to give up of the self, to understand the needs of your mate, to provide the needs of your mate, that's what God brought Adam and Eve together to do: provide one another's needs, suitable helper, comparable to each other.

   And if we understand that, what amazing differences there would be. Now we're not talking again about some deep philosophical point that's just so difficult to understand that you've got to have a PhD in philosophy to get down to the basics of it. We're talking extremely basic material here. And it's not been hidden from us.

   So if you want to know how to dwell together with understanding, it requires really only two things. One, it requires understanding the differences, and then it requires putting to practice what you learn about life. It's just that simple.

   Some time back I wrote a Plain Truth article that I entitled "How God Designed the Family." And we can anticipate any month when we have articles in the magazine, or any of the writers get back letters from the readers. Most of the letters are friendly and complimentary, but almost always there are a few letters that are critical, that take another side, that are in disagreement with what we write.

   Because I used a word from the Bible out of Ephesians chapter five, where we were reading before, and I said we would go in and out of that chapter a few times, so you might want to turn there. Ephesians chapter five. I used a word from the Bible that said if you want to understand the family as God designed it, if you want to set up your family based upon biblical principles, then there's a word you've got to understand. And that word is "submit." You got to understand the word "submit."

   Now it is, if you're not careful, a negative word. It is a suppressive word. It is a word that almost automatically, depending on your background, relates to one person, usually the female, the wife and the marriage, being subjugated by the superior male of the species. And this is of course the history of human beings on the earth. It's been a male-dominated, male chauvinist society that we've lived in for all these thousands of years, for the most part, and until comparatively modern times, it was that way.

   So I use the word "submit." I thought in a proper biblical sense, but it was something that stirred up a hornet's nest because I got a lot of letters — hate mail, we call it an editorial when we write these kinds of things. It is a word that strikes a response in especially modern Western culture where women have moved out of a more suppressive, repressive culture from ancient past, even the recent past, and are now enjoying newfound freedoms and liberation — and some of that properly so, by the way. I don't want to belittle that in any way.

   But some of the mail I got said something like this, you know, you read you some quotes from it: "You're just like all the other male chauvinists. You want to keep women barefoot and pregnant. Why don't you wake up and enter the twentieth century?" Okay, I'm awake. I'm in the twentieth century.

   Another wrote, "I'll tell you right now, if that's what the Bible says, I have no intention of doing it. If I have to submit to my husband, I have no intention of doing it."

   And another, "Why should a woman have to submit to a man? We are just as good as you are. It has taken all this time for us to achieve equality, and now you want to send us back to the Middle Ages."

   I didn't realize how explosive that word was, I think, until I got some of this kind of mail from the material. As the years — as the time went by, the weeks after I got the article was published.

   Well, I didn't mean for that to happen, of course, and I find that a bit humorous because I'm probably for the Worldwide Church of God in one sense of the word as avant-garde in this way as just about anybody in the ministry. I look at myself as being reasonably progressive in women's rights to the point that I've had to take heat from our own internal sources, and some of you probably have questioned things we have done.

   We did get a few, not a lot, but a few concerned and some angry letters from church members that we would use women on the World Tomorrow telecast as a part of our presentation team. We have, by the way, received tremendous responses from especially the ladies in the church of appreciation that we finally recognize that there is a contribution that can be made. But we got some letters and some people say, "What are we gonna be doing now, you know, ordaining women? Is that the next step for the Worldwide Church of God? What are we doing? Abandoning all biblical principles?" And Mr. Tkach got some pretty strong mail from people who objected to using women on the television program.

   About four or five years ago when I became the editorial director of the publications early on — and let's say in my administration, to use that term — I appointed Mrs. Sheila Graham as the managing editor of the Plain Truth magazine. When I got my share of letters of people who were concerned, "How could you put a woman in a position of management at that level of the organization? What a terrible thing it is." And Sheila gets regular letters because she writes regularly for the magazine from people who don't think a woman ought to be writing for the works publications.

   I'm sorry, I do not share that, and nor does anybody in my realm of responsibility, including my superiors in the organization, and we think Sheila Graham does a wonderful job and is quite a capable lady. And no, she will not be ordained ever. She does not wish to be ordained. She does not consider herself that, but she fulfills a responsible, capable position in this organization, and I make no apologies for it.

   Now I realize when I say that I'll make a couple of enemies. I hope not in this room, but I'm willing to take the heat because I feel God has led us and we have to understand the way we're going. And I don't want somebody to jump all over Mrs. Graham, who happens to be of course a mature lady as opposed to let's say Wanda Todd, who's quite a young lady doing some of the reporting, or Christina Cole, who are both of them in their cases reasonably young ladies doing some of our reporting segments on the program. And yes, they do in their reporting segments refer to the Bible. I just for the life of me can't see why it would be considered wrong to do that.

   But there are those who feel we are living in violation of the term "submit," and I don't feel we are at all. In fact, as we read Ephesians chapter five, if you have your Bibles open there, the whole section sort of gets the tone started in verse twenty-one. Ephesians 5:21, where we're told, "Submit to one another."

   Now I know that most men who abuse the Bible read verse twenty-two. They say, "Wives submit to your husbands as you would to the Lord." And so for how many thousands of years people have been reading this since the New Testament times — more than let's say close to two thousand years — have taken Paul's what appears to be abusive terminology. It is not, by the way — I just say appears to be because it's been twisted, it's been distorted — and people will sometimes, especially the male chauvinist types, read verse twenty-two, "wives submit to your husbands as you would unto the Lord," and they don't read verse twenty-one, don't want to hear verse twenty-one, don't want to talk about verse twenty-one and just assume — I'd never read verse twenty-one, but I can't stop reading verse twenty-one because it's part of the context.

   And if I'm going to read verse twenty-two and I'm going to tell my wife that there is a submission responsibility within the confines of marriage, I've got to back up and read, "Wait a minute, this is a two-way street." And that the word "submission" therefore should not be interpreted as authoritatively as many have done in the past.

   Now, if we read verse twenty-one in that context, that there is a certain obligation we have to one another, a certain deference to one another, we're talking about dwelling together with understanding. I want to understand my wife. I want her to understand me. And as we live together and dwell together and we grow in understanding, we learn to give and take. We learn what our strong points are and what our weaknesses are, and we learn to defer to one another. We learn to respect one another's counsel and advice. That's what "submit" means. It's an equal two-way street.

   And in every way when it comes to mental capacities, shockingly enough — again, I guess this is a modern revelation — there is total equality of the sexes. There is no superiority. We are not talking about who is better than whom in any way, form or shape. We are different, and different does not imply better and worse, and I wish for once and for all we could get that through our heads. Different does not imply better or worse. If one is bigger or stronger, it does not make one better. That's all there is to it.

   Let's go back to I Peter three, where we were reading before. I Peter three and pick up another thought. I Peter chapter three and verse seven (I Peter 3:7), because I want to emphasize equality. We talked about dwelling together with understanding. And husbands are directed in verse seven to understand, as again a generalization, that in a physical sense of the word, wives are not as strong, that the female of the species was created with a slightly different muscular structure for specific reasons. That's what "the weaker partner" means.

   But notice at the end of verse seven, "because you are heirs together of the gracious gift of life, heirs together." Now if that says anything to me, it says there is similar, the same spiritual goals for females as males. When God created Adam and Eve distinctly said — and remember I talked about yesterday, if you only had chapter one, you would probably have a slightly different view than the distorted view sometimes given from chapter two of Genesis.

   Chapter one just says, "In the image of God He created them, male and female he created them." There's no sense of superiority given there whatsoever. We don't know anything about that. What we know from the Bible is God's revelation to human beings is when God created male and female, that there was total equality.

   Now that doesn't mean there are not differences of responsibility. We're talking about differences as well as similarities, but we should understand the ultimate spiritual potential of the male and the female is exactly the same.

   In fact, Christ came to reveal — or one of the questions, one of the questions that the Jews never understood in the days of Jesus, and maybe I don't know, most people ever have — was, "What will it be like in the next life? What will it be like after this physical life is over?"

   Some people don't believe in an afterlife. They don't believe in another life. They don't believe in life after death. They don't believe in the kingdom of God. They don't believe in spiritual birth into another kind of life, a change from mortal to immortal. But of course many people do.

   And when you get to talk about it, and nobody can really describe what it's like because God doesn't give us a clear picture. The Sadducees didn't believe in a resurrection from the dead in the days of Jesus, always had a trick question. And the trick question was, "A man is married. And he dies. And his wife is now a widow, and she gets married again. And he dies, and she's a widow for the second time, but she gets married again. And now she's — and he dies and she's a widow for the third time." And they had this, they kept taking the people through it and now she's been married finally seven times and all her husbands have been dead.

   In the resurrection, the trick question was, "Who will she be married to?" Remember that story in the Gospels. "Who will she be married to in the resurrection?" was the question of those who didn't believe in an afterlife.

   And Jesus said that's a foolish question, because in the resurrection there is no such thing as marriage. There is no male nor no female. But in the resurrection, the physical qualities of maleness and femaleness have disappeared, and you are only then regenerated spirit, however that takes place in the resurrection.

   And so it was a foolish question to ask in the first place, but the believers in the resurrection and afterlife, the Jewish community of Jesus' day had never thought of that. They didn't know the answer to it. They never could answer that trick question. Jesus gave the successful answer that in the next life, that in life after this physical existence, there is no such thing as male and female, and thus there is no union of marriage that takes place in that life. So that solves that problem. We don't need to worry about our eternity.

   But we're physical. This is now. There is a purpose in our being male and female, because this is a training ground, a qualification, let's say, God's plan for us to be in the resurrection in the next life.

   Now if we go back to Genesis one once again and we see the creation of Adam and Eve, you can just kind of run your fingers down the page and look at the various events of the creation week as they're recorded in chapter one of Genesis, and you find at the end of each day God viewed his creation, and he talked about how good it was. That it was good, that it was this way, and everything was being planned and it was on schedule and it was being done correctly.

   On the sixth day of the creation week when God had created Adam and Eve, and thus we have now human beings made in the image of God, a species quite different from all other of God's creation, with the great and ultimate potential to live forever, to be changed to immortal beings. At the end of that time, verse thirty-one of chapter one of Genesis (Genesis 1:31): "God looked at what he had made on that day, and he said it was very good" — an emphatic word. It was not just plain good. It was very good. What God had done now in creating mankind, human beings, male and female, it was very good.

   Now what did God do? I was talking yesterday about how we can combine the knowledge of the Bible, the spiritual knowledge of the Bible, with modern research, with modern techniques of understanding, with modern psychology, medical science, all of the coming together of knowledge, the accumulation of human experience we've been able to learn. And we know a lot about human beings that we didn't used to know from the point of view of historical.

   What we find when we analyze what God did is that human beings are made up of cells. Now all life is made up of cells. I won't get you into a biology lecture here. This is very basic stuff. We'll keep it that way. All life is composed of cells. Human cells are made up of two kinds of chromosomes that make up human cells. Now we've just labeled them very simply for biological purposes: X and Y chromosomes. You and I, and that's what we are. It's very simple, very basic. You're a set of X's or X's and Y's and so on. That's what you are.

   When God made Adam, that is the male, he made him of both an X and a Y chromosome. Now we know that scientifically. Now that's what God may not have called it that, but that's what we call it scientifically, medically. So Adam was made and he was made out of an X chromosome and a Y chromosome. That's just his cell structure, and that's what makes those of us who are male of the species male. We have to have X's and Y's or we're not males.

   Now male therefore can be defined in many different ways, but one way to define male is the one, because of the X and Y chromosome structure, the one who performs the fertilization process for the purpose of human reproduction. The male does the fertilizing, and that's possible because of the cell structure, the chromosome structure of the male being X's and Y's.

   Now when God created Eve, remember we were talking about that yesterday in chapter two of Genesis, he caused a deep sleep to come upon Adam, and he took up his bone and his flesh from his side, and he formed and he fashioned a comparable help to him that we noted in many, many ways, certainly first and foremost mentally, mentally the same, but there were notable physical differences, notable physical differences that they must have seen right from the start.

   And when Adam saw Eve, he said, "This is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh." He knew now that this was not the animal species. This was like no horse or cow or dog or goat or chicken or pig or horse or whatever had come before him. This was now bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh, but as I've noted, it was different. It was the same, but it was different.

   Now what was different was created because when God made Eve, he made her of only the X chromosome cell structure, and that's what makes you who are female, female. You don't have Y chromosomes. We're not talking better here. We're just talking different. You're female because your chromosome cell structure is made up only of X's, and we who are men have X's and Y's. Thus we who are men are capable of performing in the reproductive process the fertilization. Because you have X chromosomes, you're female. That means you are capable of bearing the offspring resulting from fertilization.

   Now there are all kinds of experiments going around. It seems like today for people, for doctors, the medical profession want to figure out how men can have babies. I don't know if they'll ever figure out a way to do that. I can't imagine that they would, but then, you know, a number of years ago, no one would ever imagine we would send men to the moon and bring them back safely, and we would do the things we're doing scientifically in so many different fields. So I'm not going to step out on a limb and say that human reproduction will never be some kind of a way in which they figure out how to implant fertilized cells within the male structure. I doubt that would ever occur. I think it'd be foolish to say it wouldn't because, you know, I don't know what the capacities are.

   But for the sake of our more simplified definition, God made females then capable of bearing the offspring which would be fertilized by the males. And so these series of the X's and Y's become extremely important when it comes to the human reproductive process. And it boils down to being, as I said, a fairly simple matter.

   But I wonder now if we don't have some things to learn in dwelling together with understanding from the process of God's creation and the designing of the human structure into the male and female of the species capable of fertilizing or being fertilized and bearing children as the case may be, if God didn't have some fun, as it were, with the way He then structured us as human beings. I think he did.

   Now we know again from further research, and you can read quite a lot about this since I gave this sermon about seven years ago, I have received quite a stack of articles and information from a variety of sources from some of people like yourselves who then read material in magazines or you studied in school and have sent me clippings, and so I've got quite a big packet of information that even further supplemented the material I put together for this sermon a number of years ago.

   What we find when we study the human brain, you know again, I'll keep this simple, that our human brains are divided into two halves we call hemispheres that are divided down the middle. We have a left side and a right side.

   Now, interestingly enough, the left side of the brain exercises control over the right side of the body and then vice versa, right side of the brain over the left side of the body. Now I imagine God probably said upon the creation of Adam and Eve said, "You know, I'm gonna give them this brain capacity, this thought capacity, this reasoning capacity, and I'm gonna put all of these intricate ways of doing things and these patterns into them. It's gonna take them about six thousand years to figure it all out as to what I did." And you know, because nobody in the past knew this. This is recent knowledge, and when I say recent, within the past sometimes just twenty, thirty or fifty years or certainly the past couple of hundred years since we've come to a lot of this kind of knowledge.

   So God said, "I'll just, you know, I'll just create them this way and they'll go through the course of their history and finally they'll figure this all out some way out in the distant path and they'll put this all together and they'll learn how I made them a little bit more about how I made them." I'm sure there's a lot more.

   Now not only does our brain divided into two halves, each half of our brain, the right side or the left side, performs specific kinds of function. We have dominance of one side or dominance of the other side, and we have functions that are different.

   For example, the left side of the brain is the side that will control our facility of language. It's the capacity — it has the capacity for us to perform logical activity. It's the mathematical side of the brain. It controls speech, writing, arithmetic. The left side of the brain performs logical and analytical functions in the way we think and do. It is interested more in the outdoors. It is more physically strenuous, it is inventive, it is explorative, and it is conquer-oriented. This is what the left side of your brain does for you, and it depends because every individual in this room will have a different dominance of sides of the brain, just the way we are. It doesn't matter whether you're male or female at this point, but we all are going to have different percentages of strength of one side of the brain or the other, and that probably has to do with genes and chromosomes for one thing, but it's another way, maybe even the way we were reared, the way our families function, the way we, the environment in which we grew up.

   Now the right side of the brain on the other side of the coin has a different functioning capacity. It's where we develop the spatial and patterned side of our thinking processes. It's where we see perspective in drawings so that you see things going down the long road. The right side is more musical and artistic. It more influences image, imagery, and dreaming, imagination. It's concerned with relationships. It shows more of emotion and it is more impulsive. It is more aesthetic than it is — how we define beauty, the things that we are attracted to — and it is more subjective as opposed to the other side, the left, being the objective side of our thinking processes.

   Now, you should from time to time, I think it's a good topic of conversations for husbands and wives to get into, talk about how each of you is in this regard. And you'll notice, and I probably — probably those of you who heard this sermon a few years ago have been doing this off and on over the years — you probably have been more tempted to say, "Well, that's the left side of the brain function" or "that's the right side of the brain." "There goes your right side of the brain, has kicked in now," especially if the wife is getting very emotional about something. The husband can say, "Now that's your right side of the brain talking." And when he's being very — whatever he's being, you know, analytical about something — she can say to him, "There's your left side of the brain. It's really kicked into high gear and you're dominated by the left side of your brain now. You're not using the emotional side. You're being very objective about this."

   Now, of course, we can make some generalizations. Mr. Keesee was talking about yesterday. You have to do that. And again, I'm not trying to talk about somebody who is not exactly the way we describe in our generalizations as being weird or odd because there's nobody exactly the, well, the perfect median, I don't think. But again we talk in generality, and of course when you understand the left side and the right side of the brain functions, you do see a pattern emerge that in general, males will be left-brained dominant, and females will be right-brained dominant.

   Now there's all kinds of flexibility within that. People, let's say males, for example, who are artistic, musical, will tend to have a more right side of the brain orientation. And likewise, there are females who are very engineering, mathematically oriented. Nothing wrong with that. It's not weird or odd not to be stereotypically on the extreme sides. So, so you don't, don't think that. Just accept the way you are, and you can then say, "Well, now wait a minute, if I am this way, do I have the capacity to shift the way I use my brain and become more right-brained?"

   One book that someone sent me after I gave the sermon a few years ago was a take off on this subject in its totality as it related to drawing and art. Now I have no artistic ability. I, the only class I ever made poor grades in in school because I was usually a good student, was when I was in junior high school and it was required to take art. I flunked eighth grade art. I never made anything lower than a B in a class in my life except eighth grade art. I could not draw, paint, finger paint, make clay pots. And the things you do with those basic — I did not have any right brain orientation, so I had a very difficult time.

   I've got a book that says "Learning to Draw with the Right Side of the Brain." That may not be the exact title. "Learning to Draw with the Right Side of the Brain," and the theory of the writer is that anyone, any left brained mathematical artistic klutz can learn to draw by learning to use the right side of the brain. And in the book are lots of exercises which I've not had the time. I've got this book probably five or six years now. I've never had the time to see if it worked. I'm still a skeptic. But one day I hope to be able to get enough time where I can actually go through and see, is this possible that somebody so left brain dominant can actually learn to shift the thinking processes, the creative processes over, and learn to be artistic? I think it would be — I would be a real convert. I believe it, by the way.

   Because I believe I have learned over the course of the thirty years, thirty-three years of living in marriage and four daughters to be far more right-brained than I ever would have been had I not been married or never had daughters. I think I've learned a lot about right brain thinking, a lot about right brained emotion. I couldn't read that story yesterday without almost breaking up. I could have read that story twenty years ago and just read it like iron will, you know, just read this story about this Russian, you know, and his wife. I could have read that twenty years ago. Yesterday I had to choke back the tears. So I know I have learned to be much more emotional and reactive in that kind of thing.

   So I think God said, "I'm really gonna give them something to think about through this time, and we're gonna give them this way. I'm gonna give them these things."

   Now when there are points of controversy from a scientific point of view. So I don't know, I don't want to carry this too far because you now — this became a very popular, this left brain right brain thing was very popular during much of the last decade. Lots of magazine articles appeared about it. Perhaps you read them in a variety of different publications, and they were discussed on talk shows, this kind of thing. And now there is developing a kind of a counter movement in the field of medical studies in psychology and maybe there's been too much emphasis placed on this, so don't carry it too far. That's my advice to you, but I think there's got to be something to it, and I don't think there's any discrepancy in the fact that we understand these kind of things, you know, they discovered these things as they dealt with patients in mental illnesses. They discovered there were people who had — this is how they came to the knowledge of this left brain right brain thing in the last, oh, maybe century or so. And so I think it's pretty, pretty clear scientifically.

   Now some of the material that you read in articles from six or seven years ago are being disputed by modern research, but I'll put it in that context. But let's see how God created this because I think this puts together a very important part of the story.

   When a little baby is first conceived, when the sperm and the ovum unite and the fertilization process. For about the first seven to eight weeks, there appears to be, because it's just a little tiny thing called a zygote, it's just a little tiny speck in size, about the size of a pinhead or so, barely microscopically visible, and that at this point in the fertilization and development process within the body of the mother, all babies are pretty much alike. Now, because, however, it has already been determined at the moment of fertilization, whether it's an X and a Y chromosome combination or an X chromosome only, that already, whether it's male or whether it's female is determined. Nothing is going to change them. You don't change in the process. It's determined at the moment of fertilization, but for the first couple of months there is practically no, well, there's no visible difference.

   Now about the seventh and eighth week, a marvelous phenomenon takes place. If it's an XY chromosome combination, that is, it's going to be male, little boys begin to secrete a special hormone that begins to develop their male testes. Little girls, of course, are in the process of developing the system of ovaries and eggs that will be fertilized in the course of her life.

   You've probably been reading an extremely controversial new ethical issue that the medical profession is facing is that aborted female fetuses. It is now possible through animal experimentation, and I think it will be possible physically to do it with human beings too, to take the eggs from aborted female fetuses and preserve them for fertilization so that they could be in vitro implanted into women who can't have babies. And it's a tremendous ethical issue. The point is not to discuss the ethics of that here, but to point out that in even fetuses already the system of egg cells have developed inside of the mother's womb as the fetus is developing, and it would be potentially they are potentially capable of removing from the aborted female fetus the eggs and preserving them for fertilization. I mean just beyond, it's probably repulsive to most of us to even think about such kind of experimentation, but this is, you know, this is what's going on. The point is the femaleness and the maleness are already there, you see, and this has begun to take place at about that time in the development, the seventh eighth week of the process.

   Then a hormone begins to be excreted for the male called testosterone. You've probably heard a lot about that too. And it's what's going to make the male the male, and of course the lack and absence of that and the other hormones that make females, females.

   Now there is a theory that between the sixteenth and twenty-sixth week of the gestation period, that there is a chemical reaction that takes place as a result of the testosterone, the male hormone that is being secreted, and that is that it sneaks up to the brain, which is about the size of a walnut at this point, and it slightly shrinks the left side of the brain. In the female androgen causes approximately equal development of the two halves, so that there is a minuscule. This is a theory now, it may not be provable, that there is a minuscule difference in the female brain and the male brain. That is the female brain hemispheres are more equally oriented and more equal transmission of fibers between the two, and the connectivity tissues that go between the two halves of the brains are more equal in females and slightly less in the part of males. And so the male dominance is caused by a certain shrinking factor.

   And so as Bill Cosby worded, he was talking about this in one of his routines, and I used it in the sermon. He said, "Therefore, you know, we are already at a disadvantage because here we are within twenty-six weeks of our gestation period. We are already — we males — brain damaged." That the shrinking process has begun to take place and of course most women have had that figured out a long time ago. They just didn't know how scientifically taken place that we — that they knew we men were brain damaged and now they know why. The secret that makes us male has snuck up to our brain and has gone just a little bit, just a little bit of shrinkage is taking place so that there's a damage factor there.

   Now when you have two X chromosomes instead of an X and a Y chromosome, interestingly enough, you develop a stronger immune system. There are about one hundred forty boy conceptions to every one hundred girl conceptions that take place in the human reproductive process. One hundred forty boys are conceived for every one hundred girls, yet natural births that take place, there are one hundred six boys born for every one hundred, so that the development of a male, you're much more likely to have a miscarriage with a boy than you are with a girl. One hundred forty to one hundred, you see one hundred six to one hundred then.

   So much for women being the weaker sex. Just, you know, what do you mean weaker? It's really not substantiated. Women withstand disease better, are resistant to lots of things more. We're only talking in muscle tone. Men, it's about forty percent of our body weight. That's muscle tissue. Women, it's about twenty percent. These are differences God created in us. And again, we're dealing with the generalization, the broad overview.

   Women deteriorate about two percent every ten years. Men deteriorate about ten percent in the same period of time. We get older faster. I don’t like that. Well, I can't do anything about it. It's built into the process, and in men, it speeds up after age forty. And all of us who are there can testify that that's true.

   Now this is scientific information. This is medical research. This is something the Bible doesn't reveal, but we have come to understand, and it, you know, it may not be the most exciting knowledge you've ever been given, but you've got to understand this is the way it is. And when I say we dwell together with understanding, we need to understand a lot more about our physical, mental, and emotional, spiritual makeups too. It's going to help us a great deal.

   Women have about four-fifths of a gallon of blood circulating in the system. Men have about one gallon and a half. In every drop of blood in a man, there's more than a million red blood cells, more than in the women. We're different. That's the point. We're different. We're not talking good, better, and best. We're just talking different. Therefore, we're going to function differently with certain physical things we do.

   And you know, to me this is one of the problems. I said, I consider myself in certain ways a kind of avant-garde guy when it comes to modern understanding. I think I have been for the Worldwide Church of God, as I said, kind of in the forefront of a movement, if that's the proper term. I don't like it, but for lack of a better one, that for equal rights type of a thing for gender equity, it doesn't bother me to say "his and her" rather than "his." It doesn't bother me to say "human" rather than "man." These are gender sensitive terms that are politically correct. I'm not offended by that. If you'll notice the Plain Truth has become. I hope appropriately gender sensitive. We do not use the term "mankind" anymore. We say "human beings" because "mankind" insinuates the absence of the female. Now it doesn't need to, but it does in today's world, and that's the way it is. So we're that way.

   So when I talk about these things, I'm not talking about who's better than what. I'm talking about there are differences in the way we're designed, and God created us to be a certain way. And we understand, if we understand that, then we're going to dwell together with understanding a great deal more. And you're going to find that a lot of things that human societies have imposed upon their cultures have not been based upon the understanding of God's word at all or been based properly upon the understanding of the physical, chemical makeup, mental makeup of human beings. They just haven't been at all.

   So young men, that is, remember, we're deteriorating more rapidly than women until age forty. It even speeds up. Therefore, young men, especially youngsters, children, because of the red blood cells and the energy level, you'll find little boys generally tend to be much more energetic than little girls. Now all of you who are parents will probably testify that as a generalization this is true. Little boys will run you ragged more than little girls will. Now you can have little girls that are highly energetic and run you ragged, but as a generalization, it will be — we're, you know, now that we're in the grandparenting stage of life, we have a grandson and a granddaughter, we're observing these things all over again. I'm observing them from different eyes than I did as a parent, of course, because I've got a lot more experience in life and things I didn't know when our children were little, I now see in our grandchildren and can pass along in a different way.

   But our little grandson is truly that way. He is, I mean, we keep him for a day and we are totally exhausted. When our granddaughter comes to stay, I mean, you know, we enjoy her just as much, of course, but she's far more prone to sitting calmly, wanting to read more, playing with her dolls more where our little grandson has got his car, his tricycle, his train, and you know, just going just like a house of fire until he drops in sleep at exhaustion around, you know, nine o'clock at night. And how does he do this? Where does he get all of this energy? I wish I had some of it. It's a matter of chemistry. We've got to understand that there's some, there's some other physical differences.

   Women have added insulation cells just under their skin, and we don't like that. Little fat cells are more dominant in women than they are in men. It's for insulation, but it also makes it possible for women to gain weight easier than men, a generalization again. Easier as a generalization.

   Men's bones are heavier and skulls are thicker, but we already knew that. You didn't need a doctor to tell you that. You knew. That's the way it is.

   Female skin is thinner as a general rule, that makes the female far more sensitive to touch and feel than males may be. My wife likes me to touch her gently. I want her to massage me, you know, get the lotion on, get on my calves and my legs and my back and just really rub hard, you know. She wants to be touched real lightly and the sensitivity of it all. We're just different, that's all.

   But perhaps maybe of the marvelous differences God has made in us and we could go on and on with them, how the brain is wired is perhaps among the greatest difference. God put his love, thoughts, and mannerisms in us. This is what it means when it says in Genesis, "God made human beings in His image." And I won't take the time here to get off into the big long debate about all this "God is" stuff that you've had to deal with in the last few months or year or so, but you should understand the primary purpose of what God said in Genesis. It's not that God has ears and white hair and therefore I've got ears and white hair. It's that I am in the thought process. I am in the creative frame of thinking. I can do things no other creature God made can do, and that's think, reason, plan, and carry out. I can hope. I can dream, I have emotions, and that's why I'm in the image of God far more than ears and noses and toes. We don't need to debate the other part of it.

   God put His love, His thoughts, his mannerisms in us, but I think he put some of those mannerisms more in men and other of his mannerisms more in women, and thus gaps come into play again because we come together and we fill in the gaps and we become more like God in our human relationships and our spiritual relationships as we've learned to dwell together with understanding if we have done that, if we dwell together with understandings.

   We have done a lot of studies scientifically, we human beings have noticing the differences between little boys and little girls. And again we speak in generalizations in control study groups, you put a group of children in a room in a playroom. And one hundred percent of the girls' noises will be verbal with communication. Girls will communicate verbally with communications. In boys, it's only sixty percent. Of their communication will be verbal. Forty percent of the noises little boys make are just that noises. Little boys get their cars and they go. "Mm," little girls can't in some cases. Some little girls cannot go "mm." They just can't make that kind of noise. They aren't wired for that kind of noise. Now some little girls can, I'm sure, but little girls get in a room and they talk and they communicate and one hundred percent of their communication is verbal communication and communication forms. Little boys, only sixty percent of its communication and forty percent of it is all kinds of little noises that they make.

   And so that we can see immediately from youth, from little children, how the left side of the brain, and remember we're talking in generalizations that the men tend to be oriented to the left side of the brain, that's the shrunken side of the brain that dominates us. The brain damaged side of the brain is the one that is dominating us men, and that's why we go around going "mm." And little girls are dominated by the right side of the brain, but even more the equal sides. And therefore the left side of the brain is the conquer oriented, and that's why little boys fight a lot more than little girls do. Little girls are more emotional and more relational. They form friendships and groups a lot more than little boys do.

   The word interestingly, interestingly, the word "love" — as we isolated, the word "love" — remember that's the verbal side, the word side of your brain — the word "love," the word "love" is on the left side of the brain. The meaning of love is on the right side of the brain. And so a man may use the word, but the woman wants to understand the interpretation, wants to understand the meaning, the feeling, and the emotion of it. So a woman asks, "Honey, do you love me?" She doesn't want to just hear the word. But the man's answer, "Baby, sure I do. I told you last month. I mean, how many times do I have to tell you?"

   Mr. Keesee had a cartoon yesterday that brought that principle out. Men do things with their friends. Women feel things with their friends. Mr. Keesee talked about how a woman needs a friend to relate to, to discuss things with, to be able to talk to. Now men need friends, but I want to do things. I want to, I have a fishing buddy. My buddy and I can go fishing. We can put the boat in the water at sunup. And spend the entire day fishing without saying a word to each other because we are fishing buddies. Our conversation may consist of no more than, "What’s ya bait?" "Yellow jig." "Catching anything?" "Got a big one." And that's, you know, that's the total of my day. I don't need to carry on a full length conversation with my fishing buddy, but I do need to do something with him. We help each other put the boat in, get the boat out, net the fish, clean the fish. We don't need to have a relationship.

   Can you imagine two women in a fishing boat all day? Who do not carry on a conversation with one another.

   What do men, we talked about the left side of the brain being the conquer-oriented side of the brain. I've got to go out and conquer something. That's the way I think, that's the way we are. I have to conquer the trip that I'm on. We go on a trip, you know, you've all been there. You go on a trip with your husband, your dad, you know, whoever husband, boyfriend. What do men do? They conquer five hundred miles today. You remember the line from the sermon in the past. I've heard it hundreds of times, as I say probably more people remember this line from the sermon than anything I said in that sermon a few years ago. I have got to make Phoenix by sundown.

   I don't know why I have to. It's just I have to. I live in Pasadena and we load up the car and it's "hurry up, get the car loaded. We are going to make Phoenix by, now what am I gonna do when I get to Phoenix? I'm gonna check into a motel and go to bed. Why do I need to be there by…? I don't know, but I have to be there by sundown. My wife wants to stop and see the world's biggest rabbit. There's a big billboard. In Arizona, you cross the state line, "Stop at Stuckey's and see the world's biggest…." I don't care about the world's biggest rabbit. I've got to be in Phoenix by sundown. What is it that we're this way?

   We go into the restaurant to have lunch and the kids are fiddling around and it's McDonald's and they've got a playground outside and they wolf down their hamburger and french fries and they go sliding on the slides and I'm saying, "Come on, get in the car, we've got to make Phoenix by sundown." It's because we're not there yet. That's where I — but I've got to get there.

   My wife has had to learn, and I'm trying to learn these things. I'm trying to overcome a lot of this stuff, but my wife's had to learn. I'm doing it. It comes and it's finished and I've got to get on to the next thing. Why can't I just enjoy the completion of what I've done? I don't know. I've got to start doing the next thing. And that's just the way we tend to be.

   Ever been on a family vacation? You're looking for something, the Washington Monument, so it's hard to find it. You're driving around and there it is over there, and the kids notice that you have passed the same intersection about three times. You probably learned, do not say "Dad, are we lost?" Men are never lost. And we do not stop to ask directions of how to get to the Washington Monument that we can see just over there. I have spent thirty minutes trying to find a way through the fence to get onto the freeway because there's the Ramada — we're staying at the Ramada Inn. And I'm driving along and my wife is saying, "Honey, can we just, there's the grocery store, let's stop and ask where the entrance is to get over." "No, I will find it. I'm going to conquer this." It's the way we are. You see, the left brain is more compartmentalized. It does things one thing at a time and then it moves on to the next thing. That's the way it is.

   Wives are more relationship oriented. Husband comes home from work and the wife says, "Honey, did you think about me today?" Oh, that's tough. "Well, I must have, I must have. But I don't recall exactly the moment whether I did or not."

   A woman's mind is like a river flowing, has emotions and feelings and overview, and it's moving and flowing along. And a woman's mind is more like a radar screen. Both sides are working. Our little shrunken left sides, man, are just kind of thinking about what we're going to do next. But the woman is thinking about her feelings. And her sensitivities.

   When I was working in the college a few years ago, I did a lot of marriage counseling, as Mr. Keesee no doubt does now. And one of the girls was just thrilled that in her dating that this young man she was dating and planning to marry, was very sensitive and very communicative, and in their dating process, she thought she had found the last sensitive man on Earth. She was so pleased, he was so feeling, so caring, so sensitive. They got married and some months later I saw her and she thought something had happened. She thought he had gone out and had brain surgery. He had seemingly lost all his sensitivity. He had, he was sensitive while he was conquering the marriage. Now he was conquering his career and the marriage was set aside. He had moved on to something else. He was devoting himself to one thing at a time. He had a certain sensitivity during the courtship, but now that he had successfully entered into marriage, he was out conquering something else, and she couldn't understand it.

   And men are kind of like Julius Caesar. Remember the old line, "Veni, vidi, vici" — you learned Latin class in high school. "I came, I saw, I conquered." That's the way we think. This man had conquered marriage, and now he was conquering something else.

   Husbands come home from work and the wife maybe says, "Honey, can we sit down and talk?" And talk. What is it? Joan Rivers talk show? What are we doing here? "Can we sit down and talk?" "I don't want to talk. I want to watch football."

   Now I really admire you guys coming to a marriage seminar on a weekend in which the NFL playoffs are in the second week. Because probably a bunch of you want to know, well, it doesn't start for another two and a half hours, but you want to know what's happening. See, Mr. Keesee, I lived in Texas for all these years. Mr. Keesee and I are rabid, and I guess I'm in the wrong country, but I'll just admit it here and throw things at me. We're a rabid Dallas Cowboys fan. And you can be a rabid Cincinnati Bengals fan if you want to. But I'm gonna want to know the entire afternoon and I'll probably have somebody checking regularly and we'll report to you if you want to know it, the scores of the football games.

   Now yesterday was a sabbath that we were here and the first thing we did, Mr. Keesee and I rushed straight to our rooms and turned on NFL prime time on ESPN because I had to know what happened in yesterday's football game. Now maybe you're not as addicted to that as I am, not all men are, but many are. Of course, the American male as a species is totally addicted to football, basketball, baseball, and other sports, hockey and other things, and addicted to it on football.

   I found it. I mean, I've always been an addicted football fan, played football in school, and I've watched football on television since it's been available, and I watch, I don't think an inordinate amount, but I, you know, I do watch a number of football games over the course of the season. And come Monday night I will often say, "Honey, come on, let's watch the football game." Now my wife would probably care less about most football games.

   But it was interesting a number of years ago when the Dallas Cowboys finally did rise to prominence. This is the first time around, and they went down another back up again. But when the Dallas Cowboys rose to prominence in football, they had a really great quarterback named Roger Staubach, and Roger Staubach was not only a great NFL quarterback, he's a great human being. He's a wonderful person, a very moral, religiously oriented man, very family oriented, has the highest sets of values, and it's a combination in today's world of professionalism where somebody will have those kinds of values.

   My wife became interested in football, not because of football. She doesn't understand X's and O's and whiteouts and zig outs and deep routes and sacks. And all of the things that go on in the football games, but she liked Roger Staubach. We invited Roger Staubach for Thanksgiving dinner at our home every Thanksgiving, all his professional career because Dallas always plays on Thanksgiving Thursday. And everything in Thanksgiving revolved around the Dallas Cowboys Thursday football game. Dinner time revolved around that. My wife didn't mind that as long as Roger Staubach was playing because she liked, she knew about Roger's family, she knew about Roger's personal life. She knew about his value systems. And she, as long as Roger Staubach was throwing passes, my wife could be interested.

   Now, he, you know, he retired and the Dallas Cowboys went down and now they're back up again with Troy. She doesn't know Troy Aikman. She had no knowledge about what he does, what he is. She doesn't know who the linebackers are and the cornerbacks, and then she doesn't know about Emmitt Smith, you know, I know all about Emmitt Smith's elbow. I know it's a shoulder, I mean, and it's all taped up today and he's ready to play and all these neat things. She doesn't know about Emmett's separated shoulder. I know about Emmett's shoulder. It's important to me to know about Emmett's shoulder. But if I could tell her about Emmett's kids, and about Emmett's wife, and about his work and charity and some of the things that he would do, she would be more interested. And she can't understand why I know everything about football, and I don't know who's coming to dinner Wednesday night.

   But you see, football's left brain. And who's coming to dinner is right brained. It's OK. Whoever's coming to dinner, that's fine with me, great, let's have dinner. But I don't know who's coming. She's invited our friends. It's quite a different thing.

   You men, you want to talk about what you want to do with her. How you want to spend time with her, you need to learn what she needs to learn. You can't say to your wives, "Let's go hunting." Now some women like to hunt, most don't, but some women do, and that's OK. But if a woman thinks about going hunting, she thinks she might kill Bambi. And it's not very pleasant thought to her.

   I don't know if you remember heard Mr. Catherwood's story. I think it's a great story. Mr. Catherwood, like I had a lot of girls, so he's learned a lot about women too. He didn't have any boys, in fact, he had three girls, and he took his girls. He told the story. He took his girls to see "Bambi" when they were little children, and of course you see "Bambi" and we just took our, we just saw with our granddaughter, not long back. And it's a very I was reading her the books what I was. I didn't see the movie. I was reading her the "Bambi" book just a few nights ago, and it's all very emotional, very teary about what happens to Bambi's mother and the forest fire and all the things that happen, and little girls cry in the movie.

   Well, now Mr. Catherwood has a little grandson, and he took his little grandson to see "Bambi" here some time back, and they watched the movie through and at the end of the movie, his little grandson said, "Grandpa, when can I get a gun so I can go hunting?" He saw "Bambi" through totally different eyes from his daughter. And it shocked Mr. Catherwood he had never thought of it that way because he had only seen "Bambi" through the eyes of his daughters. Now he was seeing "Bambi" through the eyes of a little boy who was thinking about hunting.

   And if you think, "Well, I won't take my wife deer hunting, I'll take my wife duck hunting." And it was a PBS special on not long back. And if your wife saw it, don't ever ask her to go duck hunting with you because of the PBS special on ducks. They find out that ducks get married for life. They're among the few species of creation where ducks get married. I mean, you know, they don't have ceremonies, but male ducks and female ducks mate for life, and a wife might not think of, you know, she's shooting this mallard drake that's going over and she's leaving a hen, a widow, all the way to South America and back to Canada for next year until she finds a new mate and it's not easy for her.

   There are differences, is my point, and we need to learn to dwell together.

   Genesis chapter two in verse twenty-four (Genesis 2:24), I guess I still have my Bible open there. "For this reason, a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh." And the old King James is a nice word. It says "cleave to her." Cleave to her, unite with her. This is the instruction. And one modern extrapolation of that translating "cleave" or "unite with her" means stick to her like glue. When you form a marital union, you cleave together, you mold and unite into one new whole. This is what God wants us to do.

   And yes, we're left brained and yes we're right brained, and some of us are more dominantly one way than we are the other. But if you've learned to dwell together with understanding, you will learn how to live together. You'll learn how to do things together.

   I was joking with one of the couples here ahead of time, you know, you, you, a lot of women now have a bumper sticker on the back of the car, "Born to Shop." There is something about the female of the species that keeps malls in business. And men don't always understand that.

   My wife and I, you know, I've learned to shop with my wife because it's a means of spending time together. We, you have to a certain amount of purchase you have to make in life, clothes to buy or things, presents to get for various people you know and are related to. And I've had to learn this. My wife goes, she goes shopping and men go hunting. I want to conquer. I can go make a decision. I can make a decision in five minutes, maybe less. I can walk into a store. I know my shirt size. It's sixteen thirty-three. I go straight to the sixteen thirty-threes. It's got red and blue stripes, and I like it and I buy it and it's done.

   My wife goes to buy a blouse and she looks at the blouse. Maybe she tries it on, thinks about what it would look like with a variety of other things, and she puts it back on the rack, and she goes to another rack. Then she goes to another store. Then she goes to yet another store. Then she comes back to the first store at the blouse that she tried on the first time that I said looks good, buy it. And that's the one she comes back and buys, but she has got to go through the process.

   I don't know why that is. But that's I've had to learn. It took me thirty-three years. I have learned that's the way it is, and I now go to a store and she tries on and I make my comments. "Looks good." "Looks, I don't like that as well as I do this," and we talk and I know she will not make a decision in that store. And that we will walk out and come back to that store later. If that's if she doesn't find something in the meantime, but she's always got to satisfy that she won't find something better in another store at a better price or that that suits her better.

   There are differences. And the way we do things, and I think that's the point I want to make. There simply are those differences that you and I must come to relate to. If you're going to dwell together with understanding, you don't criticize those differences. We have spent thousands of years belittling each other as men and women for our differences instead of saying what a wonderful way God has made us. Each to complement the other, one to have more emotional relationship feelings and the other to be more logical and movement oriented, and we fit together and blend together and learn to be more like each other, and women learn to orient themselves to the man's way of thinking and a man learns to orient himself to the woman's way of relationships, and by the time you spent fifty years together, you have melded yourselves into a team that is inseparable. I mean it happens right away. It should happen in the first days of your marriage. This is a beginning thing.

   But a lot of people don't do that. Instead they spend their time belittling, criticizing, ridiculing, making fun of putting down, and then divorcing one another because they never learn to dwell together with understanding.

   So the Bible says dwell together with understanding. It's an important key. For success in marriage, and I hope that this will be a sort of a recasting of a thought process that will lead you to think in terms of being able to discuss that.