The Bible’s Messiest Families & What They Reveal About Yours | Deacon Ryan Budd: #162
So many young people from divorced or dysfunctional families assume their story is unique — or worse, that they’re destined to repeat the same patterns. But the truth is, family brokenness is far more common than anyone talks about. And God has been dealing with messy family dynamics since the beginning of time.
In this episode, Deacon Ryan Budd, who served as Dr. Scott Hahn’s research assistant, reveals how the Bible is full of families just as complicated, chaotic, and wounded as ours. He explains why God doesn’t simply “fix” things instantly, how healing actually unfolds, and what Scripture shows us about breaking cycles and building something new.
We cover:
Why broken families are more common than you think
The surprising dysfunction hidden in biblical stories
How God works through pain instead of erasing it
David’s family drama — and what it shows us about redemption
Practical steps to begin healing and avoid repeating the past
If you’ve ever feared that your future family is doomed by your past, or you’re searching for hope in the mess you come from, this episode is for you.
Buy the Book: Salvation Stories: Family, Failure, and God’s Saving Work in Scripture
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TRANSCRIPT
Transcript produced by artificial intelligence. Please pardon any errors!
Joey Pontarelli (00:03)
Welcome to the Restored Podcast. I'm Joey Ponnarelli. If you come from a divorced or dysfunctional family, this show is for you. We mentor you through the pain and help you heal so you can avoid repeating your family's dysfunction and instead build strong, healthy relationships. If your parents divorced or your family was really dysfunctional, it's easy to feel alone, to feel like nobody else has struggled like you did and nobody really gets it. I felt that way for years, especially in my late...
in early 20s. But what if your family's brokenness is far more common than anyone admits? And what if one of the most influential books in human history is actually filled with families just as dysfunctional and messy as ours? In this episode, we explore the surprising dysfunction hidden in the Bible and what it reveals about your story. You'll hear how God works through pain instead of instantly erasing it about David's family drama, what it teaches us about redemption, and some practical steps that you could use to be in healing and avoid repeating the
My guest Deacon Ryan Budd served as Dr. Scott Hahn, a really famous biblical scholar's research assistant and has spent years studying biblical families and helping people navigate brokenness in their lives. There is so much hope in this conversation. So if you've ever wondered, am I the only one from a divorced or dysfunctional family? Am I the only one still struggling with this? This episode is for you. Now in this episode we do talk about God and faith. If you don't believe in God, you're totally welcome here. This is not a strictly religious podcast.
And so wherever you are, I'm glad you're here. If you don't believe in God, I just challenge you to listen with an open mind. Even if you skip the God part, you're still gonna benefit from this episode. And with that, here's our conversation.
Deacon, so good to have you on the show, welcome. ⁓ Be here. You're someone who deeply understands this problem of broken families and I'm really excited to get your wisdom, your insights into this. I've heard you say that the Bible is full of really messy, dysfunctional families. Can you take us back to maybe the moment you first noticed that and what was going on maybe in those families that made you think, huh, this feels like a lot of families I know today? Well.
Deacon Ryan Budd (01:40)
Thank for having me. It's so good to be
I wish I could say there was some kind of aha moment. There wasn't. I am a huge fan of the Baptist preacher Alistair Baig. Alistair is around Cleveland, Ohio, and he's not Catholic, but he is a master at breaking open the biblical stories. And he did a series on 1st 2nd Samuel that I listened to religiously, and it was amazing what he was saying about
the characters and the stories in the Bible, and I started to realize there that all these are real people. David's a real person. Saul's a real person. Mikal, David's first wife, is a real person. And that started me thinking about this topic. And then when I was in a parish as a seminarian, I started a weekly Bible study because I said, need to do as Catholics what Alistair's doing. So I started by giving a presentation on
a particular family, scripture family, each week. And then people could ask questions, and we talked about how this relates to us and what we learned from it. And it was in the midst of just doing that, because it was very simple. said, well, I want to do a Bible study about the stories in the Bible. Where do I start? Well, families, because everyone's got a family. It was like, OK, baseline, everyone can relate to this. That was the thought. And in the midst of just doing the prep work, going through and actually looking at these people, like, these are, these are
dark stories. A lot of these families are very, very broken, very dysfunctional, and yet God is there with them. And that was kind of the ultimate good news that I saw from that whole thing, is that occasionally he was hidden from them. They couldn't see or feel him, but he was there, and he was able to bring them to a place of, sometimes a place of healing if they cooperated with him. Occasionally not. We get both sides, both kinds of stories, and then some halfway
some families, we don't actually know the end of the story, so we can hope that they reach some resolution and some healing. But it was just by virtue of trying to understand the families in the Bible that I realized that the Bible is a story of broken families. And one great big broken family, the sons and daughters of Adam and Eve, right? But each of big broken family is made up of little broken families. And I discovered that it's just as, you know, we think of the traditional family as full of harmony and
It's just as traditional to be dysfunctional, unfortunately. And there's only one family in the Bible that avoids it completely, and that's of course the Holy Family of Nazareth. ⁓ But even they are not immune from pressure and difficulty and anxiety and fear. So all these are normal parts of being human, and by being with them in these struggles with these families, God is consecrating that suffering and that anxiety and that fear.
He's somehow turning it into a means of meeting him and becoming mighty.
Joey Pontarelli (05:04)
And I'm curious, there maybe, especially given our audience, was there a family that comes to mind that we can maybe look at or get into a little bit who might mimic some of the families today, especially ones that are really dysfunctional, broken, divorced?
Deacon Ryan Budd (05:18)
There's a whole lot of them. just thinking about a bird's eye view, you have Abraham and Lot at the beginning of Genesis, and they fight over not having enough means. They were living above their means. The biggest cause of divorce, other than pornography use, we can't really quantify that because people don't talk about it, but other than possibly pornography use, the largest cause of divorce is tension over money, debt, failure to save. Four out of five families in this country had no savings.
living paycheck to paycheck and the kind of tension and it's harder to be kind, it's harder to be thoughtful, it all adds up in a little mountain that turns into a big mountain and they end up in divorce. So that's the number one cause of divorce. So we can go back to Abraham and Lot when they come out of Egypt with all their cattle and they end up in the desert and there's no water, they get in fights over the water. If you strip back a few of the contexts that are specific to their time and generation, we realize these people are just like us. Isaac and Ishmael,
is a story about the older brother getting surpassed by the younger brother and envying him and he's, Ishmael is struggling, I think, with his image of manhood. He's an adolescent young man who's bullying his baby brother. This is obviously not good behavior, but what's going on in his life, he's trying to struggle through becoming a man and realizing that he's not going to inherit from his father, playing the deadly comparison game, which is all teenagers ever do.
unfortunately and it's really destructive. You learn that as a youth minister how destructive the comparison game is for teenagers and adult siblings and friends. And it goes on from there like Isaac has Esau and Jacob and you would never know that these three were related because they're so different. So how do you deal with a family where your personalities are so different? And then Jacob's family they they are a soap opera. Really really bad stuff. I mean they're they're so messed up.
He has these 12 sons with these four women. The women are crying out for affection and attention from him. They don't know how to handle the situation. The sons become moral catastrophes, with the exception of Joseph. So it just goes on and on. It really is a list of brokenness. And God is in the midst of it, guiding everything toward Jesus and his cross and his resurrection and the mystery of the church. Even the most dysfunctional family can become part of God's story to save the world.
So are there any of those you thought would be worth talking about?
Joey Pontarelli (07:46)
I think one of the kind of questions maybe popping up in people's minds is like, why didn't God just fix it? That's one maybe way to ask the question or what maybe prevented God from being able to help them find the healing and regain, you know, some level of like health and wholeness and functionality within their families.
Deacon Ryan Budd (08:05)
That's obviously always a really big question. Fulton Sheen at one point, and I couldn't find the video. I went to look for it again because I referred to it in the conclusion of the book that I wrote, and I wanted to give credit appropriately, but I couldn't find the video again. He said, a lot of the questions of suffering come down to the kind of universe God created. There's a deeper question at play. What is the kind of universe?
that God created. And the answer is a moral universe. A moral universe, which is the climax of all things is the free will of rational creatures. Right? So we choose how things go, for better or worse. God's grace is there to help us make the right choices. Good examples are there to help us make the right choices. When our emotional life is in order, our emotional life is supposed to help us make the right choices. But the inheritance of original sin
we have this deep-seated resistance to doing what's right. And at one point, I was able to get into ⁓ the beginning with Adam and Eve. Actually, in the book, I wait till the end to talk about it. But when I was in seminary, we had this course with Dr. John Love, who is a professor at Mount St. Mary's Seminary, and he's an expert in St. Thomas Aquinas and St. John of the Cross. But he was teaching us about the curses of Eden.
If you remember going back to Genesis, God pronounces certain curses on Adam and Eve. And you can trace all of the dysfunction in the Bible families, one way or another, back to those curses. Wow. Which were God describing to Adam and Eve, this is what your life is going to look like if you don't choose to ask for my forgiveness and my mercy. Because Bible curses are usually conditional.
God is saying, this is what it's gonna be like if you don't change. I'm offering you a chance. I'm telling you exactly what's going on so that you can make the most well-informed decision you want. This is what it's gonna be like. You have a choice now, right? And so he lays this out to Adam and Eve, and Adam and Eve still choose to be away from him. And the basics is the woman's motherhood and the man's fatherhood are under attack. Wow.
and they lose their ability to easily find fulfillment in those roles which they were created for, so they go look for it somewhere else. And it's returning to that beginning where we see that the way we experience family life is not how God designed it. God did not make our families the way we often experience them with the tensions and the conflicts. That was not His design. And so getting closer to Him is the way to heal these things, ultimately.
through righteousness and repentance and prayer and forgiveness of others is the way to allow Him to do the healing that we can't. Because all this comes back to, this is what it's like to be away from Me. It's kind of a long-winded answer, but all these different families, to the extent that they come back to God, is the extent that there's healing. And the extent that individuals in the family stay away, some of that healing isn't allowed to happen because of free choice.
Joey Pontarelli (11:05)
That's a great answer.
No,
that's a good answer. And I know it deserves its own not just podcast, but course and life to wrestle with that big question, that problem of pain and evil in our lives. But no, I appreciate you going into that. It's just so fascinating. You mentioned just God's kind of response. I'm curious if there was, you know, when you look at all these broken families in scripture, kind of what was one particular situation where God like responded and, kind of he brought some good, tangible good out of like
all the messiness, all the brokenness that came out. I know we kind of touched on some things, but I'd to go deeper in one that like, you know, it's very clear. He brought good out of it. He was there.
Deacon Ryan Budd (11:58)
strikes me. What I was thinking about that question was the story of David and his brothers. David and his brothers you see starting, I think it's in chapter 17 of 1 Samuel, no it's a little earlier. Samuel comes to the farm to anoint the next king of Israel because God tells him one of the sons of Jesse of Bethlehem is going to be the new king. And Samuel comes and David's father summons his seven
brothers and presents them before Samuel and leaves David out in the pasture. He thinks so little of David that he doesn't even bother to present him to the prophet, right? So there's a beginning like, is he really thinking of this guy as his son? I didn't get into all the speculation, but like you could imagine what that signals about their relationship, right? That's the first one. And then we know the story, you know, Samuel goes down the line as it were with each of the brothers and God says, not him, not him.
Not him either. And then Samuel asks, do you have any more sons? And Jesse says, yeah, well there's the one out with the sheep. And Samuel says, well, go get him, right? And you get this sense when David comes into the circle of his brothers that God himself is excited to see him. This is he, this is the one, anoint him. You can kind of almost feel God doesn't get excited. if God got excited, he would have been excited. Like, this is him, he's here. But what do the brothers do?
What are the brothers? They say, wow, it's so cool. Our brother's going to be the king. No, no. When he shows up to fight Goliath a couple chapters later, they know who he is. They know what the prophet did. And they say, you know, what are you doing here? You're supposed to be home with the sheep. You know, didn't our father continue to leave you out in the field and send us to war? And they basically say to him, are you doing? This is none of your business. So they actually resist his becoming exalted as the king.
And perhaps that has something to do with why David's story is so tortuous. David is on the run for a long time, something like 20 years passed between his anointment and his coronation. And at first he is basically by himself. But at one point, actually at his lowest point, he's living in a cave. Saul has been chasing him all over Israel to try to kill him. And he's living in a cave. I think it's the cave of Adulam. And just the scripture just very quietly says, his brothers went to him.
at the lowest point. They wouldn't be there for him when he was anointed. When he came to exercise the role of the Messiah to fight against the enemy of God, Goliath, he was doing the Messiah role, the King role, to fight the enemies of God. They wouldn't recognize him. When he was killing his tens of thousands as the hymn goes, know, Saul kills his thousands, David kills his ten thousands, when he's a famous war leader, they're not with him, but at his darkest moment, perhaps they remember.
That's our brother. And we don't get any details about that reconciliation, but we do see that after that point, David's brothers actually do have a role in his kingdom. But you can only imagine what that meeting looked like. Sometimes the scripture is very modest. It leaves some details off screen because it's almost like private. Like, know, David's family, that's their business. But we can only imagine what kind of reconciliation that is. like, you know, David, we're so sorry.
We're so sorry we weren't there for you and all this time and here you were in a cave and man, when was last time you cleaned this place man? And then David might have said, well you know, but my tone of voice with you guys wasn't that great either so maybe I contributed and maybe they had a good cry and a hug and you know, they did the old ancient Middle Eastern version of a come home meeting with each other.
Fascinating. around drinking beers around a fire, know, like maybe what we would do now. They did whatever their version of that was. Then it seems like after that they were bound to each other like iron. So it was somehow through that, through their own neglect of him that they came to appreciate who he was. And maybe potentially out of sorrow for what had happened, they came to support him in his darkest hour. And we don't know whether he would have given up. We don't know whether he might have been killed. Maybe David, mean, this is how God works, but...
if God had worked differently, would David have ever become who David was? So that the brothers were there, perhaps at the time he most needed them. God is invisible. This is one of the things that you'd want to talk about. God doesn't show up as an actor in that history. But if you understand that God is the protagonist of the Bible, you realize, no, God is the one who drew David's brothers to him in that moment and helped him make the right decisions.
Joey Pontarelli (16:28)
If you're from a divorced or broken family, the holidays can be so stressful and challenging. know that pressure issues between parents, being reminded of your family's brokenness, especially if you've been living out of the house or at school, and just feeling a bit lost and alone and navigating it all. Thankfully,
You're not alone. Our free guide, Five Tips to Navigate the Holidays in a Broken Family, offers really practical advice that you won't hear anywhere else, a worksheet to plan out your time with your parents, super helpful, and even a copy paste template you can edit for communicating with your parents through messages or even a call. Most of all, the guide helps you feel less alone and more in control when the holidays hit. You can get the free guide at restoredministry.com slash holidays, or just click the link in the show notes. It's fascinating. I remember you saying elsewhere that,
Just maybe as a little bit of a side note for anyone being like, where are you getting all this from in scripture? Like it's kind of wild. You can read it and it can feel very dry. But, I remember you saying elsewhere, and if you could elaborate on this quickly, that there's a reason for that. There's a reason you could don't get the full like emotional backstory. Do you recall what I'm saying?
Deacon Ryan Budd (17:27)
In biblical times, if you're writing something down, it's probably on stone in the earlier times, and later it's on papyrus, and it's very expensive to write on stone. You need the stones. You need someone who knows how to carve the stones. You need to know someone who knows how to write. Not very common, so scribes were actually very, they were like white collar workers, really, really elite individuals, because they had gone to school to learn how to read and write.
They usually knew a lot about their subject so that they could make sure that the manuscript they were copying was correct. They were highly educated people. So because of all these things and because ink was expensive, know, supply and demand, so there wasn't much demand, so it was really expensive. There wasn't much supply. The demand was very, more elite people. So all the costs of production were very high for writing.
and copying, so it tended to be done very efficiently, very economical. ⁓ The Bible is written also as a record of events that the scripture author knows is bigger than what he chooses to write down. There's more going on in the scene than the writer chooses to record, obviously. He would have to say, then Abraham breathed, and then Abraham breathed again, and then Abraham breathed again. So there's like...
There's so much off screen, so we've always felt entitled to try to understand what's off screen, reading between the lines. And when you do that, that's when you start to discover the humanity of these people. When you realize that, what's Ishmael doing, beating up his brother? Well, he's a 14 year old boy beating up a three year old. Like, there's something really wrong here. Then you can, then you sometimes are speculating, but at least you figure out the basic issue. Here's a young man.
who's dealing with what it is to be an adolescent, who's dealing with what it is to have his little brother surpass him, who's dealing with everyone acknowledging that and having a celebration of that in front of him. So you end up being able to discover how these people are human and relatable, and then how God works with them in their lives, and God doesn't change. So, well, I kind of feel like Ishmael. So maybe God can be there for me, and maybe if I actually listen to him, which Ishmael clearly didn't, maybe I could have a different outcome.
Maybe I don't have to go out into the desert.
Joey Pontarelli (19:48)
I follow you there. No, that's fascinating. And that's where I think your book can be so helpful to everyone listening because you walk people through the context and you set the scene and everything like that, which is great because it takes a lot of study, a lot of time that everyone doesn't have time to do. And so you did the work, which is amazing. I want to go back to what you had mentioned about God cursing Adam and Eve, or at least presenting the curse. How do you think that's played out in like modern life with modern families, especially
modern broken families you mentioned that their fatherhood and motherhood are attacked. I'm just curious your thought on how that's played out today.
Deacon Ryan Budd (20:22)
Well, I really do think it explains everything. Really? I do? The most powerful, emotionally, is the interaction between men and women. How that has been twisted by those curses. Because, and before I describe it, the reason it's worth describing is God is saying loud and clear, this is not how I wanted it to be. This is not who I made you. There is another way. Right? So, the reason why these curses are recorded is to tell us
that the way we're experiencing it is not the only way it has to be, right? But what God says to Eve, and he says to Adam that the ground is going to be cursed, and that's attacking his ability to provide, his fatherly role of providing. And he has already failed at protecting, because the serpent wasn't even supposed to get in the garden to begin with. So he has already failed in his masculine duty of providing and protecting. And so,
He's going to be tempted to look for fulfillment in another easier place that at least superficially promises fulfillment. And then God says to Eve, you'll have increased pain in childbirth, which is attacking her motherhood. And then he makes very clear how one of the major temptations, how this is going to work out for women. He says, your urge will be for the man and he will dominate you. That's not a nice word.
It's the same word that Moses uses to describe the Israelites coming into the land of Canaan. Domination, conquest, subjugation, brutality. It's not a nice word. What it means is women are going to look for the fulfillment in men's affirmation and in men's arms. And you tell this to an audience of teenage or college young women and they start to cry because they understand.
And a lot of them have made decisions along these lines that they regret with every piece of their body, with every piece of their heart. And you're saying, and by teaching this, we're telling them loud and clear, you don't have to stay like this. This is not the only way. There is another way. But the curses explain so much of contemporary culture because what are we looking for? Man stops being a protector and a provider and becomes a potential predator. That's what he is. That's what he becomes. The possibility of becoming a predator.
to possess women, to possess things, to beat up on other men, to look like he's the best and the biggest. And yeah, that explains what we now call toxic masculinity. It explains a lot about men, and of course, we know all about how the interactions between men and women are not the way they should be in our culture. mean, it's loud and clear. mean, when I go to the grocery store, it's the only time I ever see these kinds of images, because they're on the magazine racks.
But, you know, the way women's bodies are depicted is exactly what God said was gonna happen. They're crying out for this affirmation by the way they let their bodies be depicted. And men are, of course, commoditizing that, taking advantage of it, dominating it. A large part of the so-called women's lib movement is actually to gratify men who benefited most from contraception. Men who didn't want the consequences of their actions. ⁓
If we're honest about these things, the Bible is telling us where it came from and what to do about it. so it's disarmingly simple.
Joey Pontarelli (23:51)
One of the things that we've talked a little bit about is like this whole idea of like, what do we do with all this? Like, what do we do with all this brokenness? And I've seen, you know, so many young people, myself included from, you divorce or dysfunctional families who feel broken, they feel stuck and they don't really know what to do with that. They don't know how to heal. You know, I remember being after my parents, what, when I was like 11 years old and the years that followed, just feeling that exact way. And so I'm curious, like from scripture, what's maybe one lesson that can help these young people?
navigate through all those challenges that they're facing in the present moment and then another lesson maybe that shows them how to find some real healing in their own life. This episode is sponsored by Blackstone Films. They just released a new documentary called Kenny. It's about an ordinary
Denver priests who lived like a true father and transformed families and inspired vocations. He would actually wake up at 4.30 every day to do an hour of adoration. His parishioners would ask him to pray for them and they actually got those prayers answered. Some even call them miracles. He had to shepherd his people through the Columbine shooting, if you guys remember that horrible, horrible event. He ate with the families in his parish every night of the week. He hiked with groups of young adults in the Rocky Mountains on Colorado.
and he sat with couples on the brink of divorce, even saving a marriage, which they talk about in the documentary. And so if you want a hopeful model of leadership and fatherhood, something worth watching with maybe your spouse or your small group, watch Kenny. The trailer and the full film are now streaming on formed.org. You could just tap the link in the show notes to watch the full documentary or just the trailer. Again, thanks to Blackstone Films for sponsoring this episode and for telling such an inspiring story that I myself watched and really appreciate it.
Deacon Ryan Budd (25:33)
I think the most important thing would be to realize that one of the biggest truths of scripture is that this is not how God made you, this is not the only way you have to be. That's loud and clear. And that is universal. That can be for everyone. There is another way. How do we get there? By practicing the commandments of righteousness, by doing what we're supposed to do, by loving our family, by loving our neighbors, by not cheating at work, by
you know, doing what we're supposed to do by praying, by offering our heart to the Lord. It's not terribly complicated in the sense that only God can heal these things and the only way to get close to God is to leave our sins behind and walk closely with Him. And from there each story gets unique, right? Because you say, it's easy for you to say, or whatever, and you don't know what I've been through, you don't know what so-and-so did to me, you don't know this, and no, I don't.
not until you meet me and we talk it through, which is one of the reasons why it's so valuable to realize that scripture has the stories of so many unique people who struggled with either similar or analogous things. You're not alone. Whatever your struggle is, you're not alone. God is not leaving you where you are. And the medicine is to try to live a righteous life, to try to become a person of prayer, to be close to the Lord who is the only one who can touch your heart, the only one who can heal your heart.
to treat with suspicion any other other promise that might offer you a quicker, easier way, and to believe that, like David's situation with his brothers, the solution on the other side of the conflict, if you persevere, will feel like it's worth it, almost. Worth it doesn't sound quite right, because some people have been through some really horrible things, and that's not quite the right words.
but the result on the other side will be a level of peace and joy and healing that can help you make sense of the past and of the hurt and of the wound, which until you reach you're not capable of that. So that's partly what I mean by worth it. I didn't like that phraseology because it might seem like it's making light of what some people have been through. On the other side of that transformation, you'll be able to make sense of all of it in a way that you can't before.
Joey Pontarelli (27:54)
So that's the solution, is to living the life that you mentioned and kind of instead of maybe waiting for God to snap his fingers and take away all the pain, walking through it with him. Which is kind of unsatisfying for some people.
Deacon Ryan Budd (28:06)
Yeah,
no, it's not the easy answer, it's not the popular answer, but if we're honest with ourselves, if he snapped his fingers and took it all away, we would screw it up again. Seriously, we would. So instead of giving us, one of the great analogies is personal training. I do none of this. I'm not an athlete. It's a miracle if I go for a walk every day. But I respect people who do these things very much, and I wish I had the discipline.
Personal training. God doesn't give you a big muscle man body because you wouldn't be disciplined enough to know how to use it unless you've gone through the work to get there. So what is one of the analogies is the process of healing will teach you how to use the freedom that it will give you. Because actually your will is part of the problem and part of the solution. Moral universe. Back to your first question. It's a moral universe and the way we make decisions is at the heart of the question.
the healing is part of the process and it's part of the reward to following the way that the Lord is going to lead somebody to healing that's actually going to contribute to the end result. You have to trust that otherwise it's a really unsatisfying answer.
Joey Pontarelli (29:19)
One of the things that's been consoling for me when I've struggled with that question as well is, you know, along these lines, it's like, I just trust that God's smarter than me. Like I know sometimes I get so arrogant and prideful and I think, you know, I know better, I'm a better father or better, whatever. And when it comes down to it, it's like, you know, I trust he's smarter than me. Like he knows what he's doing. Even if I can't see like the big picture, you know, I can't see the ending of the movie in the middle of it.
I trust there is a happy ending, a good ending, especially if I do my part and play the role I've been given, which is hard too. But yeah, that's just the maybe simple layperson way for me to understand it, is like, God's smarter than me.
Deacon Ryan Budd (30:00)
He is. Even when it seems like he doesn't know what he's doing. Because it feels like that. And that's why we have to get into the more full explanation of how this thing actually works. Because, especially in other church cultures, those lines are so used that they become trite and unmeaningful. But no, that is when you boil it down. God is smarter than us.
Joey Pontarelli (30:24)
And I appreciate that, like about, you know, when you're in the midst of it, it can be really hard to, and that was me. I definitely have been there multiple times or yeah, can feel like we said before, like God's distant. It doesn't make sense. It doesn't seem like he knows what he's doing. Really good. Well, before we close down on maybe another question or two, I think what one of the questions that comes up when we talk about this topic of like, yeah, there's a lot of broken families out there. There's a lot of broken families and scripture is that it can almost feel like, well, know, is that the norm?
Like, that like what we kind of can expect for our own future families? You know, someone listening now who maybe is engaged or wants to be married and maybe even their newlyweds now, you know, is that the only option or is there another path that we can choose? And I know we've talked a bit about the specifics of that, like living that different life, but I want to play that out a little bit further in light of especially the chapter you wrote about the Holy Family.
Deacon Ryan Budd (31:13)
Yeah,
like you just mentioned, the whole message is yes, there is another way. But the answer is yes and no, because it's an unfair burden to expect your future spouse to be flawless. It's not fair to him or her to have that expectation. And it's not a fair imposition on him or her to expect yourself to be flawless either. So on a realistic level, yes, you can expect dysfunction because that's what
it is to be a human after the fall. Yes, you can expect healing. Yes, you can. When you mention the Holy Family, the story of the last chapter of my book and my own coming to appreciate them better is all united. So the original manuscript of the book just had these messed up Old Testament families. We didn't actually have the Holy Family chapter in it. And Melissa Gerard, who's the editor,
and a much wiser woman than I am a man says, you know, this is a really dark book. We need to end on a hopeful note. And I said, Melissa, I'm Irish. This is just the way it is. And she says, no, no, no, no, you have to write about the Holy Family. I said, but everybody's done the Holy Family. What do I have to offer? What right do we have to hold the Holy Family up as an example to others? They're so different. One of them's God, the other's the Immaculate Conception, and the third is the most righteous dude ever.
other than his son, right? And they're not supposed to have their own children, but they had this like literally God child, right? So they're what, how can they relate to us again? But I kept most of that to myself. And like I said, you know, the Bible says a wise man should accept advice. So I said, okay, fine. I'm going to guess this professional editor knows better than I do with my first ever book, and I'm going to do what she says. Fine. So I start thinking through
the example of the Holy Family and what they can teach. And one of the things that struck me is that they are the church writ small. They are a mini church. Because the new covenant began in their home. God became flesh. God Himself entered into this mess in person, in flesh. And He became a man of sorrows, accustomed to grief in their home. And here He is in the midst of them.
And we often forget that Our Lady needed grace to be who she was. She wasn't superwoman. She was full of grace. That means she was full of God's help. That meant God was helping her do everything, be everything she was. And the same with Saint Joseph. So, they were able to be who they were because of who was in their midst, in the flesh. And as the Catholic Church, we understand that the sacraments are the continuing of that physical presence of Jesus Christ in the midst of the Church.
This is the most ancient tradition and we can see the way the evangelists tell the stories that this is what they have in mind. Jesus is always touching people because he touches us in the sacraments. And so we have everything they had. The Holy Family. That's how we can relate to them. We had Jesus Christ in the flesh, in our midst, in the Eucharist, in the other sacraments. The Living Word Himself. The one who came down to earth to be with us because He wouldn't. He would not let us perish. And He offers us, in principle, all the same grace as He offered them.
to be holy and full of grace and mercy and to be able to avoid all the conflicts that are part of a willful, sinful, ordinary family. And all of those promises, I believe, are held out to us in the sacraments of the church. And I dare say I've seen it in a lot of families that I've had the privilege to work with over the years.
Joey Pontarelli (34:51)
That's beautiful. I love that. I'm really glad we got to talk today. Before we close down, I'm wondering how can people get the book? How can they follow you online?
Deacon Ryan Budd (35:00)
You can buy the book at Emmaus Road Publishing, stpaulcenter.com. Emmaus Road Publishing is the St. Paul Center's publishing house. The St. Paul Center is Dr. Scott Hahn's research institution, teaching institution in Steubenville. So you can buy the book there.
Joey Pontarelli (35:15)
Sounds good, and we'll make sure to link to all that in the show notes for you guys. But Deacon, again, so good to have you here. I want to give you the final word. What final advice or encouragement would you offer to a young person listening right now who, especially just feels broken, they feel discouraged by all the brokenness, all the dysfunction that they see in their family? What would you leave them with?
Deacon Ryan Budd (35:35)
bigger than all of it, ultimately. That he's bigger than all of it, and that might sound trite, but it's also true. To just not give up hope, and to practically don't try to be alone, because you're not. A faithful friend is a sturdy shelter, because even when he has gone through something different than I have, we have that fundamental loneliness and brokenness and waywardness in common, and nobody's alone in all of this, and that's...
One of the biggest temptations is to feel like no one understands me, nobody can help me, no one can... and it's simply not true. So, not to try to carry your cross by yourself. Even Jesus didn't do that.
Joey Pontarelli (36:14)
That wraps up this episode. If this podcast has helped you, feel free to subscribe and rate or review the show. You'll avoid missing future episodes and help us reach more people too. In closing, always remember you are not doomed to repeat your family's dysfunction. You can break that cycle and build better life and we are here to help. And keep in mind the words of CS Lewis who said, you can't go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending.
