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Beyond the "Uber-Masculine": Finding Identity in Christ's Authority · Thinking Christian: Bible, Theology, and Culture

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Speaker 1: The world is becoming increasingly proficient at telling stories that
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Speaker 1: deny God. As such, we need Thinking Christian to become
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Speaker 1: as natural as breathing. Welcome to the Thinking Christian podcast.
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Speaker 1: I'm doctor James Spencer, and through calm, thoughtful theological discussions,
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Speaker 1: Thinking Christian highlights the ways God is working in the
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Speaker 1: world and questions the underlying social, cultural, and political assumptions
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Speaker 1: that hinder Christians from becoming more like Christ. Now onto
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Speaker 1: today's episode of Thinking Christian. Hey everyone, welcome to this
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Speaker 1: episode of Thinking Christian on Doctor James Spencer. I'm joined
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Speaker 1: by doctor Ashish Pharma, and today we're going to be discussing,
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Speaker 1: you know, continue our discussion of Biblical masculinity, and I
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Speaker 1: want to address some work by somebody that I would
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Speaker 1: consider to be a fairly influential evangelical who's written on manhood. Now,
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Speaker 1: there are a lot of people who I could have chosen.
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Speaker 1: I will say I ran across this work not because
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Speaker 1: I read this individual frequently, but because I was referred
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Speaker 1: to it by someone else. They were asking me some questions,
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Speaker 1: and so I really got into this topic in part
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Speaker 1: because people were asking me questions about it. So what
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Speaker 1: I want to do is read part of this book.
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Speaker 1: It's called Act Like a Man, Nine Ways to Punch
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Speaker 1: Life in the Mouth. That's the title by Rob Driscoll.
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Speaker 1: And so this Mark Mark, Yeah, not Rob Mark, Mark Driskoll.
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Speaker 1: That tells you how much I read him. My apologies.
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Speaker 1: Part of the reason for reading this is not to
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Speaker 1: detegrate Driscoll, right, it's not the point. The point is
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Speaker 1: that this is an influential pastor who is I will
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Speaker 1: trust to trying to do something that is constructive and
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Speaker 1: helpful for his congregation, and in writing this book, I
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Speaker 1: feel like has made a real deep mistake in the
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Speaker 1: way he frames masculinity. And so I do not like
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Speaker 1: his content. I would not enjoy it, endorse his content,
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Speaker 1: but I don't really know him well enough one way
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Speaker 1: or the other to say that. You know, I don't
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Speaker 1: want it to come off as a ad hominem attack.
2:15
Speaker 1: So what we're going to do here is we're going
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Speaker 1: to read through this passage that he includes. This is
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Speaker 1: on the feminization of the church. It's it's his historical
2:26
Speaker 1: take of why the church has become more feminine. And
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Speaker 1: I don't agree with the history of this. I think
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Speaker 1: there's good reasons not to agree with the history of this.
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Speaker 1: We'll get into that a little bit, and then I
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Speaker 1: think just the way this whole narrative is framed, it
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Speaker 1: sets up a very stereotypical notion of masculinity that then
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Speaker 1: we'll go ahead and talk through for the rest of
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Speaker 1: the episode. So I'm going to start by reading a
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Speaker 1: rather long section out of this book and then we'll
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Speaker 1: discuss So here goes. I'll be looking away with this, yeah,
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Speaker 1: Gregor t I'll be looking away from the camera for
3:02
Speaker 1: those of you who are watching the video because the
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Speaker 1: book is over here, But just ignore that part and
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Speaker 1: listen to what's going on here. So this is quote
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Speaker 1: from Driscoll's book Act Like a Man. Historically, what has
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Speaker 1: happened in our nation has also affected the church in
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Speaker 1: many generations. Like during World War two, young men left
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Speaker 1: the country to go to war. They were almost thirteen
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Speaker 1: million active duty military, which was around nine percent of
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Speaker 1: the whole population going to war. War took the young
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Speaker 1: men out of the country and placed them under strong
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Speaker 1: male leadership with brotherhood. Who had a battle. Meanwhile, back
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Speaker 1: at home, who's left in the church? Women and children?
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Speaker 1: We love women and children, and they also need to
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Speaker 1: be in church. But the church no longer has strong
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Speaker 1: young men, so then the women in the church decide
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Speaker 1: they're going to run the church. All of a sudden,
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Speaker 1: church starts to look like women decorated it. As an aside,
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Speaker 1: whoever decided mauv was the official color of Christian decor,
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Speaker 1: We forgive you hard since there Since there are a
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Speaker 1: few men in church during war, all the programming is
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Speaker 1: for the women and children, so they hire an older
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Speaker 1: guy who isn't off at war to be a pastor.
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Speaker 1: He's retired and he's kind of like a really kind
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Speaker 1: hearted grandpa who's going to love women and children. Next,
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Speaker 1: they need to find a guy who will lead worship.
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Speaker 1: This is where things get offensive. All the strong men
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Speaker 1: are off at war, so they find a really nice
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Speaker 1: guy who can lead worship. The least masculine guy is
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Speaker 1: leading worship. I'm not criticizing, I'm just observing. In the
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Speaker 1: Old Testament, the worship leader is a guy named David,
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Speaker 1: a shepherd, which in those days was actually more like
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Speaker 1: a cowboy with a gun than your typical mental picture
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Speaker 1: of a docile man in a tunic. This guy isn't
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Speaker 1: like David, so we have a nice Old pastor who's
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Speaker 1: a grandpa and his confused grandson leading worship, and they
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Speaker 1: emotionally connect with the women and children. Then the men
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Speaker 1: return from war and they show up in church. They think,
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Speaker 1: I'm not going to listen to that old man. I
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Speaker 1: can't relate to him, and I can't sing like that guy.
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Speaker 1: I can't get in that octave unless I have an injury.
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Speaker 1: I would need not wear a cup to hockey night
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Speaker 1: and then I could sing like that guy. The men
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Speaker 1: walk into what feels like a feminine environment. It sounds
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Speaker 1: like a feminine environment, and it seems like it's for
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Speaker 1: women and children. The men of the church left and
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Speaker 1: never came back. End quote. So that's what Driscoll writes
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Speaker 1: about the feminization of the church. It's hard to know
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Speaker 1: exactly where to start with us, but I'll go with
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Speaker 1: a couple of the obvious points. Number One, it seems
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Speaker 1: like from the statistics when people came back from World
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Speaker 1: War Two that seminary enrollment actually went up, that you
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Speaker 1: had a lot of soldiers who were coming back and
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Speaker 1: going to seminary in order to go back into the churches.
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Speaker 1: So I think that is narrative here of the men
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Speaker 1: left the church and never came back isn't quite right.
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Speaker 1: I think you had a lot of young men come
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Speaker 1: back go to seminary with the intention at least going
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Speaker 1: back into the church. So I would say from that aspect,
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Speaker 1: his narrative is a bit off. I would also question
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Speaker 1: his note on all the programming became about women and children.
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Speaker 1: This is not the era of the megachurch in World
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Speaker 1: War Two. These are denominational churches by and large. At
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Speaker 1: this time. You're talking about Presbyterian, Lutheran, even the Baptist
6:26
Speaker 1: churches are going to have a relatively rigid, durable structure
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Speaker 1: to them. This is not like a megachurch or a
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Speaker 1: seeker sensitive church that you can shift because the audience changes.
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Speaker 1: You know, Lutheran Church. I can go back to the
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Speaker 1: Lutheran Church today and it's the same Lutheran church I
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Speaker 1: went to as a kid. It hasn't gotten more masculine,
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Speaker 1: it hasn't gotten more feminine. It's the same exact church
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Speaker 1: I went to. And so when I'm saying those durable rituals,
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Speaker 1: I think he's overplaying his hand with that, just from
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Speaker 1: a historical perspective. And then the last thing I'll note
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Speaker 1: is just the reference to David as a worship leader. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: I'm not sure about that, not sure that I'm even
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Speaker 1: comfortable with the analogy of having an Old Testament worship
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Speaker 1: leader and especially identifying that person with the King. Now,
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Speaker 1: there isn't a clean differentiation between the cult in the
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Speaker 1: Temple and the Old Testament, but I mean, arguably the
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Speaker 1: priest would be the more logical person to say is
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Speaker 1: the quote unquote worship leader in the Temple. Even then
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Speaker 1: I'm not really sure I would. So those are just
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Speaker 1: three points from this that I would throw out there
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Speaker 1: just to kind of show, like, I think he's making
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Speaker 1: moves intellectually that are probably not quite right, and so
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Speaker 1: this entire narrative to me doesn't really read as a
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Speaker 1: historical narrative. It reads as historical fire that is made
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Speaker 1: up in order to reinforce the point that he's trying
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Speaker 1: to make, which is the Church doesn't feel comfortable to
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Speaker 1: manly men, and manly men need to take it back.
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Speaker 2: Yeah. I have a few thoughts on this. Thanks for
8:16
Speaker 2: that overview. That there's some I didn't know that about
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Speaker 2: seminary enrollment in post World War two, So that's that's
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Speaker 2: quite the splinter for him. To have to dig out
8:30
Speaker 2: just the idea of taking for granted what the manly
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Speaker 2: man is. Philosophers would say, that's begging the question. I
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Speaker 2: think we've we've done pretty well in the last couple
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Speaker 2: of episodes of methodologically getting to the root of the
8:49
Speaker 2: problem with those sorts of claims, so I'll leave that
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Speaker 2: one alone. I find it interesting the way though, that
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Speaker 2: he seems to identify maturity with physical traits. Researchers have
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Speaker 2: shown that roughly speaking, men reach their athletic primes in
9:13
Speaker 2: that twenty five to twenty eight range that generally overlaps
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Speaker 2: with what we see in professional sports, for instance, where
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Speaker 2: people reach the height of their physical abilities during those times,
9:26
Speaker 2: at least in male professional sports. A women's athletic prime
9:30
Speaker 2: I read was a little bit younger, early twenties, and
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Speaker 2: then after you get to probably around thirty, you start
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Speaker 2: to see the people that endure that stay around. They've
9:41
Speaker 2: adapted their games. So right post thirty, Michael Jordan, everyone
9:44
Speaker 2: could see couldn't jump as well as he could, but
9:47
Speaker 2: he perfected the post game, right. I think we've seen
9:51
Speaker 2: similar sorts of things with Lebron James, where the longevity
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Speaker 2: of his career is because of the little things that
9:58
Speaker 2: he didn't do when he was younger that he's profect did.
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Speaker 2: And you can see this in various sports. Tom Brady,
10:04
Speaker 2: he wasn't great into his forties because he was every
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Speaker 2: bit as good athletically. He did something right, He adjusted
10:12
Speaker 2: dietary needs, he got really flexible. He was smart in
10:15
Speaker 2: the way that he took contact from the pocket those
10:18
Speaker 2: sorts of corus. Anyway, I don't know of any other
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Speaker 2: walk of life than that sort of for lack of
10:29
Speaker 2: a better term, Muchi's moode that would look at that
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Speaker 2: sort of prime athletic pocket of twenty five to twenty
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Speaker 2: eight and maybe up to thirty and called that the
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Speaker 2: peak version. Right, Even in athletic events, very few people
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Speaker 2: think that athletically prime Michael Jordan was the best version.
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Speaker 1: Of Michael Jordan, that's right.
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Speaker 2: You know most of his championships came actually after that.
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Speaker 1: That right.
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Speaker 2: So it's an odd sort of claim. Biblically, it's even
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Speaker 2: more odd when I think of, for instance, proverbs. Right,
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Speaker 2: you get these lines about that silver crown upon the
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Speaker 2: man's head as the marker of wisdom. Yes, it's referring
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Speaker 2: to gray hair and gray hair doesn't happen to the young.
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Speaker 2: It happens to the old. Now, it doesn't mean that
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Speaker 2: everyone who's gray in the head is wise, but the
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Speaker 2: idea of play there is that wisdom is developed as
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Speaker 2: a sign of true maturity. Yes, well, that that inherently
11:28
Speaker 2: coincides with the loss of muscle mass, right right, the
11:33
Speaker 2: loss of those quick twitch muscle abilities, the need to
11:38
Speaker 2: stretch more so you don't strain that calf or whatever. Right,
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Speaker 2: So on that most basic level, that's interesting. Historically, it's
11:48
Speaker 2: also really odd because what you see there is of
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Speaker 2: movement to a kind of ideal that, for both Christian
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Speaker 2: and non Christian historically doesn't exist.
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Speaker 1: Yeah.
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Speaker 2: I mean you think about Aristotle, who's writing around the
12:12
Speaker 2: mid three hundred's BC, becomes particularly influential in his work
12:18
Speaker 2: during the Middle Ages in the Western world, But he
12:21
Speaker 2: describes the virtuous person. For him, it's the man, right,
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Speaker 2: And I think there's a lot of criticism to give
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Speaker 2: to Aristotle right there, but what we can hold that
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Speaker 2: off to the side. For him, the woman is inherently
12:32
Speaker 2: not virtuous because she's too easily led by her passions.
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Speaker 2: I'll leave it at just false. But his instructive point
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Speaker 2: is that for him there's a balance, and so while
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Speaker 2: he's not willing to understand women as potentially virtuous, that's
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Speaker 2: on the negative side. A positive dome from Aristotle was
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Speaker 2: that he also was not willing to accept the machismo
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Speaker 2: as virtuous. He saw it as frankly meat headed. He
13:03
Speaker 2: saw it as too instinctual, not deliberative enough, not able
13:09
Speaker 2: to wrestle with nuance, not able to think through what's
13:14
Speaker 2: good for society at large. Right, thanks too much in
13:19
Speaker 2: terms of hormonal imbalances, hormonal desires, thanks too much of
13:27
Speaker 2: the self. And so for him, the balance was someone
13:31
Speaker 2: who was thoughtful, was someone who was in tuned with
13:35
Speaker 2: a larger society. For him, it was the polus level
13:39
Speaker 2: the city. It was someone who had friends and was
13:44
Speaker 2: able to relate to those friends as peers, not as
13:46
Speaker 2: someone who owed those friends things, and nor someone who
13:50
Speaker 2: depended upon those friends in order to make ends meet. Right,
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Speaker 2: It was a peer level sort of thing. And I
13:56
Speaker 2: think on the positive evaluation, if we get rid of
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Speaker 2: sort of the genderation of what Aristotle was doing, there
14:03
Speaker 2: was a recognition, even by the Church when he became influential,
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Speaker 2: that there was something important to the balance here. Now,
14:09
Speaker 2: the Church at times fell into deep problems with embracing
14:14
Speaker 2: the genderization, and at times, when I think here, of
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Speaker 2: the Cappadocian fathers challenged it. Basil the Great, for instance,
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Speaker 2: one of the great Cappadocian fathers, referred to his sister
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Speaker 2: Macrina the elder as the truly smart one of the family,
14:31
Speaker 2: referred to as the truth theologian as a family, and
14:34
Speaker 2: depicted her as the virtuous one in the family. Right,
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Speaker 2: So there's a challenge to that notion, though not often
14:40
Speaker 2: enough in the broader context. But the instructive point here
14:43
Speaker 2: is that over time, this thing that, whether Christian theologian
14:50
Speaker 2: or Greek philosopher, there was a general understanding that the
14:56
Speaker 2: machismo effect that comes with all the superior physical abilities
15:03
Speaker 2: of one's athletic prime where the farthest thing from the
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Speaker 2: actual maturity that goes into wisdom, and the actual maturity
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Speaker 2: that goes into the too, what we would think of
15:14
Speaker 2: as excellence or virtue. Yeah, and yet we live in
15:19
Speaker 2: a time and maybe we can ask the question at
15:22
Speaker 2: some point of chicken or the egg. I'm not entirely sure,
15:25
Speaker 2: but we live in a time in which the genderization
15:28
Speaker 2: still exists, but we've we've chopped off the crown of
15:34
Speaker 2: silver hair, and what we've made instead is that machismo
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Speaker 2: as the image of valor. Right, we see that, we
15:42
Speaker 2: see that in our popular depictions. Right, the superhero crises,
15:47
Speaker 2: as I like to call them, they're all they're all
15:52
Speaker 2: meaty figures not necessarily known as wise figures. Open up
15:57
Speaker 2: DC comics and Batman, Superman, even one woman. Just these
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Speaker 2: incredibly ripped and toned muscles. Incredible, Right, I don't know
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Speaker 2: anyone in real life who has those other than prime
16:08
Speaker 2: David Robinson. But that's another conversation. And here we have
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Speaker 2: Driscoll elevating that over a sort of thoughtfulness. And I
16:22
Speaker 2: don't want to devolve us into a place in which
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Speaker 2: we think well to be intellectually or bookishly smart is
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Speaker 2: therefore to be wise. No, we couldn't be farther from
16:31
Speaker 2: the truth there either, Right. But it's the ability, the
16:34
Speaker 2: maturity to be able to reflect upon these things that
16:37
Speaker 2: scripture itself, Right, the crown of silver hair points to
16:42
Speaker 2: as something that we ought to pay attention to. But
16:47
Speaker 2: not only does do we have in that passage that
16:49
Speaker 2: you read a denigration of sorry an uplifting of the
16:53
Speaker 2: physical prime as the state of maturity and the true manliness.
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Speaker 2: We also have the denigration of elderly, specifically, no one
17:03
Speaker 2: wants to listen to their grandfather?
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Speaker 1: Are you kidding me exactly?
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Speaker 2: I mean, I'll pause there thoughts.
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Speaker 1: No, I mean, I agree, I mean, I think you
17:13
Speaker 1: there's so many layers to this. I think what you're
17:16
Speaker 1: saying about, you know, this sort of idea of macheese
17:18
Speaker 1: mo here and the contrast of them to the elderly
17:21
Speaker 1: grandfather who's in this story. The funny part is that
17:26
Speaker 1: the guys who come back with macheesmo, who are in
17:28
Speaker 1: their physical prime, what do they do well? When they
17:31
Speaker 1: can't play a game that they like? They take their
17:33
Speaker 1: ball and go home. I think the story ends with
17:37
Speaker 1: these petulant children who can't stand to be in a
17:40
Speaker 1: maw of church moving on. And you sit back and
17:44
Speaker 1: you say, how is that a picture of manhood?
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Speaker 2: Like?
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Speaker 1: In what world do you walk into a church and say,
17:54
Speaker 1: my wife and children are really being fed here? Right,
17:57
Speaker 1: let's just say that that's what happened, and my wife
18:00
Speaker 1: and children are really being fed here. But because I
18:03
Speaker 1: don't relate, I'm now going to stop my feet and leave.
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Speaker 1: That is not my picture of it doesn't It doesn't
18:12
Speaker 1: even fit with my picture of like a cultural picture
18:15
Speaker 1: of masculinity. Nor does it fit with what we talked
18:18
Speaker 1: about at the end of the episode last time, which
18:20
Speaker 1: was this imitation of Christ, the paradigm that Christ sets forth.
18:25
Speaker 1: Why is it that a man who's coming back from war,
18:28
Speaker 1: who is supposedly supposed to be like the leader and
18:31
Speaker 1: the guy, why can't he sit in that discomfort and
18:37
Speaker 1: enjoy watching his wife and child be fed. Why is
18:41
Speaker 1: it that self sacrifice is not part of what these
18:44
Speaker 1: men who self sacrificed in war. Why is it that
18:47
Speaker 1: they won't do that for the church. It's such a
18:50
Speaker 1: strange way of crafting this narrative that these strong men
18:54
Speaker 1: coming back from the war are just unwilling to sit,
18:57
Speaker 1: like I said, in the mauve walls of a church,
18:59
Speaker 1: like who cares what color churches? Right? Like the dumbest
19:03
Speaker 1: possible thing to be frustrated about, you know, Like the
19:08
Speaker 1: whole narrative. It takes everything that you would want to
19:11
Speaker 1: see biblically, elevation of the elders, right Karen, protection of
19:17
Speaker 1: women and children, right, brotherhood that recognizes the gifts of
19:24
Speaker 1: everyone in the church, as opposed to claiming the least
19:27
Speaker 1: masculine guys up there singing falsetto right. It takes all
19:32
Speaker 1: that throws it out and says the church you returned
19:35
Speaker 1: to the men who went off for more. Yeah, the
19:37
Speaker 1: ones who left, the ones who decided they couldn't stand
19:41
Speaker 1: being in this uncomfortable situation, that's who we should give
19:44
Speaker 1: the church back to. I'm really uncomfortable with that. I
19:49
Speaker 1: don't want to give it back to them.
19:51
Speaker 2: Yeah. Great, great point. And that's that's taken for granted.
19:55
Speaker 2: That he's right that they left.
19:57
Speaker 1: Right.
19:58
Speaker 2: It seems to me that if if you had record
20:00
Speaker 2: high levels of enrollment at seminars at that point, it
20:02
Speaker 2: sounds like that tales already false.
20:05
Speaker 1: Right. Like I said, I think his narrative is completely
20:07
Speaker 1: historically inaccurate. But if you look just within the narrative,
20:12
Speaker 1: even the characters he creates within his narrative, these are
20:15
Speaker 1: not the guys you want to turn the keys of
20:17
Speaker 1: the church over to.
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Speaker 2: Not at all. They're not praiseworthy. They're not people that
20:21
Speaker 2: you want to imitate. It's sort of like they're the
20:28
Speaker 2: If we want to accept that image of the modern
20:31
Speaker 2: superhero and his physique, to to have the one as
20:34
Speaker 2: the prime, the one to look up to. We're not
20:37
Speaker 2: even talking about the superheroes. We're talking about the ones
20:40
Speaker 2: who didn't make it into Avengers Tower or the Justice Hall,
20:44
Speaker 2: the halls of Justice, right right, the ones who are
20:46
Speaker 2: on the outside looking longingly and maybe bitterly. That's sort
20:50
Speaker 2: of the image that he's given us. Can I say too,
20:53
Speaker 2: as a side note, I have no idea what MOV is,
20:56
Speaker 2: and I'm okay with not knowing, because I think that's
20:58
Speaker 2: so beside the point that, yes, just move along, Driscold.
21:05
Speaker 1: I'm going to take it what came to my mind
21:07
Speaker 1: because I had to look this up, right, because again,
21:09
Speaker 1: I grew up Lutheran Church. There are times when the
21:12
Speaker 1: Lutheran Church is adorned with purple. Now, purple is not, usually,
21:17
Speaker 1: like in our day and age, a manly color. Right
21:21
Speaker 1: back in the day, purple clothes would have been worn
21:24
Speaker 1: by the rich. It would have been assigned especially royal, right,
21:28
Speaker 1: especially royal. But nowadays, like there are certain colors that
21:33
Speaker 1: are culturally associated with masculine and feminine, but purple would
21:36
Speaker 1: be more on the feminine side. And so you sit back,
21:39
Speaker 1: and it's like, well, the Lutheran Church has been doing
21:41
Speaker 1: that for as far as I could tell, ever, right,
21:44
Speaker 1: I mean, I think there is times when they have pink, right,
21:47
Speaker 1: And so you just sit back and you're like this
21:50
Speaker 1: whole color thing that he throws in. There is this
21:52
Speaker 1: little chuckling aside. It's a jab, right, and I know
21:59
Speaker 1: he's trying to be funny, but it's also just sort
22:02
Speaker 1: of unnecessary, and it drives home a point that I
22:09
Speaker 1: think he is actually trying to make, which I just
22:12
Speaker 1: sit back and I say, this may be the worst
22:14
Speaker 1: point ever. I'll I'll throw this in, let me, let
22:18
Speaker 1: me add this little I'll read another passage from him,
22:22
Speaker 1: and we can kind of get this response. But overall,
22:24
Speaker 1: what I would say is this historical narrative is not historical.
22:28
Speaker 1: I think it's a fiction designed to fit what he's arguing.
22:31
Speaker 1: He's retrofitting history in order to fit his scenario that
22:35
Speaker 1: he wants to advance in the present. But after this passage,
22:40
Speaker 1: directly after this passage, so the men are uncomfortable in
22:43
Speaker 1: this feminized environment, and he writes this quote true or false?
22:49
Speaker 1: Can women feel comfortable in a masculine environment if it's
22:52
Speaker 1: not angry or aggressive? True? Can you take your girlfriend
22:57
Speaker 1: to a sports bar? Yes? Comfortable, healthy heterosexual, normal men
23:02
Speaker 1: feel comfortable in a profoundly feminine environment. No. I've never
23:06
Speaker 1: seen a healthy guy ask his gal. Can I go
23:09
Speaker 1: to the nail salon with you? If you're that guy,
23:12
Speaker 1: you need to know, with the full love of Jesus,
23:15
Speaker 1: you're a weirdo.
23:20
Speaker 2: Philosopher me wants to pipe in again and say you've
23:22
Speaker 2: begged the question of what a healthy guy is right
23:25
Speaker 2: when I put again and we won't go down that route.
23:28
Speaker 1: I have been to the nail salon with my daughters.
23:31
Speaker 1: I feel perfectly fine there. Do I get my nails done? No,
23:36
Speaker 1: But that's more just me, not like I think it's
23:39
Speaker 1: unmanly to get my nails done. I'm perfectly comfortable in
23:42
Speaker 1: the nail bar with the girls.
23:45
Speaker 2: Yeah.
23:46
Speaker 1: I don't feel like I'm a weirdo.
23:48
Speaker 2: It's an odd thing to refer to the painting of
23:51
Speaker 2: nails or the colors of walls. We're talking about wavelengths
23:55
Speaker 2: of light. Right, It's an odd thing to refer to
23:58
Speaker 2: those things as inherently or female in way, in terms
24:03
Speaker 2: that are anything other than cultural. Right. You mentioned the
24:05
Speaker 2: Lutheran Church in purple. My mind went to if you
24:09
Speaker 2: go to the Vatican Museum, you can't miss it. As
24:12
Speaker 2: you're walking through the halls of the Vatican Museum, this
24:14
Speaker 2: gigantic bathtub functionally from the ancient Roman Empire, and it's purple.
24:22
Speaker 2: It is unmistakingly purple. And you know what, we know
24:27
Speaker 2: that it was an emperor's because it was purple, because
24:31
Speaker 2: it was the color. So that's why I got the
24:32
Speaker 2: idea of royal right there, right, And I wonder if
24:35
Speaker 2: the Lutheran Church is some sort of genealogy from that.
24:37
Speaker 2: But we know that it was an emperor. You know,
24:40
Speaker 2: I can only imagine fill in, fill in the blank,
24:42
Speaker 2: whichever emperor was Diocletian. Diocletian refused to take a bath
24:48
Speaker 2: in that gigantic imperial tub because it was purple. Come on,
24:51
Speaker 2: give me a break, right. The idea that waveplanks are
24:55
Speaker 2: white are gendered, right, right, And the same thing goes
25:03
Speaker 2: for the painting of nails, like yeah, okay again, that
25:07
Speaker 2: screams cultural stereotype more than it does something inherently true
25:13
Speaker 2: of a different wavelength of light bouncing off of someone's
25:16
Speaker 2: fingernails than mine.
25:19
Speaker 1: When I think it goes a lot of what he
25:21
Speaker 1: talks about in this whole section that I've read. He's
25:24
Speaker 1: also doing what we were suggesting in those first couple episodes.
25:29
Speaker 1: You're taking something that's second order. What does it mean
25:33
Speaker 1: to be feminine? What does it mean to be masculine? Well,
25:36
Speaker 1: we don't really exactly know, like it's never told to us.
25:40
Speaker 1: We're just supposed to know in and of itself, right,
25:44
Speaker 1: And so that makes then mauve feminine, nail salon's feminine,
25:50
Speaker 1: but sports bars masculine. And then there's some correlator that
25:54
Speaker 1: we're supposed to make to the church that the church
25:56
Speaker 1: has become feminized, right, But the only thing we're really
26:01
Speaker 1: given are there's an old pastor, there's a guy who
26:05
Speaker 1: sings too high, and in the walls are the wrong color.
26:12
Speaker 1: Like to me, what he's doing is begging a second
26:15
Speaker 1: order question back into a you know, a first order problem.
26:20
Speaker 1: And the way he wants to fix that, it seems,
26:23
Speaker 1: is to make the church more comfortable for men and
26:27
Speaker 1: then let the women and children just be in it,
26:31
Speaker 1: because they will, but we won't, right.
26:35
Speaker 2: Well to that point, not just even men for particular men.
26:38
Speaker 1: Right, right, Yeah, Because evidently the least masculine guy is
26:42
Speaker 1: not going to be fully comfortable in the new Church.
26:45
Speaker 2: Absolutely not right. And the reality is that to say
26:52
Speaker 2: this is what a man is, what would you have
26:54
Speaker 2: to do? Well, we'll give it a voice range. Look,
26:57
Speaker 2: the voice range between me and you is already arrange, right,
27:01
Speaker 2: And we're just two people body type. All right, you've
27:05
Speaker 2: got the muscles, but I play basketball. Does that count?
27:09
Speaker 2: You know? But then you've got other people who couldn't
27:14
Speaker 2: care less about the muscles or the basketball. Who's to
27:18
Speaker 2: say that that's less man? So in effect, what he's
27:21
Speaker 2: done here, deeply ironic, is what he said is we've
27:24
Speaker 2: got this group of people, and we'll call them men,
27:27
Speaker 2: as if only men have these interests. Right, we have,
27:31
Speaker 2: by the way, the WNBA, and we have the whole
27:36
Speaker 2: women's side of the aisle of the Winter Olympics or
27:40
Speaker 2: the Summer Olympics or something like that. Right, right, last
27:46
Speaker 2: I checked, there's women doing that. Your own daughters are
27:48
Speaker 2: volleyball players, right.
27:51
Speaker 1: Not anymore if they do gymnastics and lacrosse, and so
27:54
Speaker 1: it's like, got it, my daughter can do a lot.
27:56
Speaker 2: Deeply, Yeah, yeah, there you go. I have four kids
28:02
Speaker 2: and the one who's probably going to end up being
28:04
Speaker 2: the most accomplished athletically is one of my daughters. Yeah,
28:11
Speaker 2: it just is, what like, there's nothing to say about
28:14
Speaker 2: that other than it's an observation of a statement of fact.
28:17
Speaker 2: But the moment you create the sort of dynay decrease.
28:20
Speaker 2: So we've taken this collection of people, but we've identified
28:24
Speaker 2: it as distinctly male. Not only have we done something
28:27
Speaker 2: to those women who have similar interests, we've also done
28:31
Speaker 2: something to those men who don't have that interest. So
28:35
Speaker 2: that we've now said and we kind of do this.
28:39
Speaker 2: Unfortunately culturally, well, those women are tomboys whatever that means, right,
28:44
Speaker 2: and those men are something less than men. And there's
28:47
Speaker 2: countless stories of I'll use the word violence. Violence has
28:50
Speaker 2: been done to them. And unfortunately, when you do that
28:54
Speaker 2: in the name of Christianity, the Church and especially Jesus,
29:00
Speaker 2: begin to put at the feet of Jesus a particular
29:02
Speaker 2: notion of gender, or particular notion of realized mature masculinity
29:09
Speaker 2: that frankly, no one can ultimately live into, right, even
29:14
Speaker 2: even the person who is that otherwise image of deep voice, muscular,
29:21
Speaker 2: athletic interested in quote male things that goes away. Right
29:28
Speaker 2: as the testosterone decreases. When you grow older, your muscles
29:32
Speaker 2: start to atrophy, your fast twitch goes away, your voice lowers,
29:37
Speaker 2: your your ability to move quickly and with strength, just
29:41
Speaker 2: like it goes away. You've ultimately put everyone into a
29:45
Speaker 2: bucket of at some point, some more than others, of
29:48
Speaker 2: being unable to be male. Yeah, and to me, that
29:52
Speaker 2: signals a poor understanding, as we've said before, of being
29:56
Speaker 2: human first and foremost, poor understanding of what maturity means. Yeah,
30:03
Speaker 2: if your designation of maturity is a very narrow window
30:06
Speaker 2: that only belongs to some, and you're not making some
30:11
Speaker 2: sort of ethical claim about that, right, Like, it's one
30:13
Speaker 2: thing to say, yeah, few people truly are mature because
30:17
Speaker 2: very few people ultimately care to be ethical beings. That's
30:20
Speaker 2: a very different conversation than a few people are ultimately
30:23
Speaker 2: mature because they just don't have that athletic skill set.
30:28
Speaker 2: For instance. Yeah, you'd you've created a problem and never
30:33
Speaker 2: mind Again, as we talked about in previous episodes, none
30:36
Speaker 2: of that even makes sense of the person of Jesus.
30:39
Speaker 1: That's right, And I mean I think this is when
30:41
Speaker 1: I first read riscal and there are other passages in
30:45
Speaker 1: the book that I find just way off base. Things
30:50
Speaker 1: like Paul wasn't married because he died too early biblically undefensible,
30:58
Speaker 1: like you, there's no shot. You're demonstrating that typically based
31:02
Speaker 1: on what's it's not yet Paul wasn't like, oh, I
31:06
Speaker 1: think I'm gonna die early, so I'm not gonna get married.
31:08
Speaker 1: He never says that it's not even close to what
31:10
Speaker 1: he's thinking, Like.
31:13
Speaker 2: Right, he says they're easier to do the ministry that
31:15
Speaker 2: he's doing.
31:16
Speaker 1: Without all as a non.
31:17
Speaker 2: Married person, which seems to be his way of saying,
31:20
Speaker 2: that's why I'm not getting married, you know.
31:23
Speaker 1: So, I mean, I think there are a lot of
31:25
Speaker 1: pieces in this book that do that they're applying and
31:31
Speaker 1: this is where I think this was my initial sort
31:34
Speaker 1: of touch point with this whole conversation. And like I said,
31:37
Speaker 1: there are others who write on this. This isn't just
31:39
Speaker 1: about Driscoll. It just happens to be the first place
31:42
Speaker 1: that I encountered this, that this was so far off
31:47
Speaker 1: that it's reading a cultural script of masculinity back on
31:52
Speaker 1: not only to Christian men, but on occasion, back onto
31:56
Speaker 1: the Bible. Right, I mean goes the one in the
32:00
Speaker 1: previous episode I've mentioned you know, Jesus wept, but he
32:03
Speaker 1: wept like a man. This is where that comes from.
32:06
Speaker 1: And so you're seeing all of these different sort of
32:09
Speaker 1: like he just takes this this map and he slaps
32:12
Speaker 1: it on top of the Bible and says, there, this
32:15
Speaker 1: is what it is. There are so many things wrong
32:18
Speaker 1: with it, this method that he's using. I actually don't
32:23
Speaker 1: disagree with his aims, right. I think we do need
32:28
Speaker 1: young men to grow up into strong, mature Christian men.
32:33
Speaker 1: I fundamentally disagree with his means. Like the approach he's
32:37
Speaker 1: taking to do that, I think is absolutely wrong. I
32:40
Speaker 1: think what it's going to produce is the petulant children
32:42
Speaker 1: of his story who decide that they can't live within
32:45
Speaker 1: a femininized church and they're they're going to be oozing
32:48
Speaker 1: machismo and full of bravado and you know, just ridiculousness.
32:55
Speaker 1: And so I think there's an aspect of this that
32:58
Speaker 1: his work really is the thing that started me down
33:01
Speaker 1: this path. And what I see is he's not talking
33:04
Speaker 1: about creating male disciples of Jesus Christ. What he's talking
33:10
Speaker 1: about is crafting culturally relevant masculine people and A big
33:17
Speaker 1: part of his problem, in my estimation is I listen
33:21
Speaker 1: to some of his videos online as well. I have
33:23
Speaker 1: a deeper voice than he does. I'm going to go
33:26
Speaker 1: ahead and bet that I can bench more than he does.
33:30
Speaker 1: So does that make him less of a man than
33:33
Speaker 1: I am?
33:34
Speaker 2: I guess?
33:34
Speaker 1: So this sliding scale that he creates, right, if I
33:38
Speaker 1: can't go to his church and look and go, well,
33:41
Speaker 1: he doesn't even you know, bench three plates. I can't
33:45
Speaker 1: listen to this guy. Am I all of a sudden
33:48
Speaker 1: justified in doing that? Like none of what he writes
33:52
Speaker 1: makes any sense because masculinity is a sliding concept. I mean,
33:59
Speaker 1: that's part of why it's cultural. It has no real rooting, right.
34:04
Speaker 1: The discipleship shapes us in ways that if I'm sitting
34:07
Speaker 1: in front of an old grandpa, or if I'm sitting
34:10
Speaker 1: in front of Mark Driscoll, I'm not concerned with who
34:15
Speaker 1: they are, what they look like. I'm concerned with what
34:17
Speaker 1: they're saying. I'm concerned with the wisdom that they embody
34:24
Speaker 1: or the lack thereof. And so I just think there's
34:27
Speaker 1: this sort of real weird tendency very much the way
34:32
Speaker 1: you've described is it Aristotle? Right, yeah, who you know,
34:36
Speaker 1: after his uh, I'm going to say this wrong Monachian
34:40
Speaker 1: ethics and ethics, thank you, ny and ethics.
34:45
Speaker 2: Yeah, what's so hard about that? James, aren't you a man?
34:48
Speaker 1: It's horrible. I'm yeah, pronunciation, I'm glad it's not a
34:51
Speaker 1: market manhood. After after he does this, and your your
34:55
Speaker 1: comment was, you know, oddly enough, the ideal man looks
35:00
Speaker 1: strangely like him, And I feel that's what we're getting
35:04
Speaker 1: out of Driscoll. The ideal man looks strangely like him,
35:08
Speaker 1: as opposed to being strangely like Christ.
35:12
Speaker 2: Yeah, or maybe a small tweak strangely like like what
35:17
Speaker 2: he projects himself to be, because I've also seen him,
35:19
Speaker 2: and I don't think. I don't think he quite lives
35:22
Speaker 2: up to his own image of himself, but at least
35:25
Speaker 2: at least the projection of what he thinks of himself
35:28
Speaker 2: to be.
35:28
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I yeah, I think the I think anybody
35:34
Speaker 1: who picked up acts like act like a man. And
35:36
Speaker 1: even just the subtitle nine Ways to Punch Life in
35:40
Speaker 1: the mouth, I don't even understand how you write that
35:47
Speaker 1: subtitle and think that that's a representative, a representative thing
35:52
Speaker 1: that Jesus would resonate with right, let's punch life in
35:57
Speaker 1: the mouth. It just screams like this sort of weird
36:02
Speaker 1: machismo bravado kind of thing. And so I think anybody
36:06
Speaker 1: who picks this book up, what I'd encourage them with
36:09
Speaker 1: is just this. Number one. So much of this is
36:12
Speaker 1: not historically accurate. Number two, so much of this is
36:17
Speaker 1: not biblically accurate. And number three. If you pick up
36:21
Speaker 1: this book and read it, it's I think his concerns
36:24
Speaker 1: are very much real. I think his means of getting
36:29
Speaker 1: at those concerns are only going to create a greater
36:32
Speaker 1: distortion and problem than what we have right now. That
36:37
Speaker 1: would be my sort of takeaways.
36:40
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think of the sort of language of Paul
36:45
Speaker 2: where he says, imitate me? Is I imitate Christ?
36:49
Speaker 1: Yeah?
36:50
Speaker 2: It would both be absurd and dangerous to look at
36:53
Speaker 2: Paul and assume that he's saying what Driscoll's saying. Yes,
36:58
Speaker 2: it would be utterly dangerous to assume that the predicate
37:05
Speaker 2: of what it means for Paul to imitate Christ and
37:07
Speaker 2: to therefore step forward into his ministry was anything other
37:12
Speaker 2: than the giving of the fullness of his very self,
37:18
Speaker 2: both for those that he encountered, but also so that
37:22
Speaker 2: the fullness of Jesus could shine through him.
37:25
Speaker 1: Yeah.
37:26
Speaker 2: None of that involved his muscle mass beyond the basics
37:32
Speaker 2: of he needed some muscle mass to move those bones around.
37:35
Speaker 1: Right.
37:35
Speaker 2: Yeah. None of that involved him even being married, by
37:40
Speaker 2: his own testimony, Right, none of that involved, presumably any
37:46
Speaker 2: kind of romantic encounter. It entirely involved his desire to
37:53
Speaker 2: give himself fully. Yeah, to be sort of a John
37:58
Speaker 2: the Baptist, John, of course famously saying I must decrease
38:03
Speaker 2: so that he Jesus might increase. That was the very
38:06
Speaker 2: mechanism by which we understand Paul's giving of himself. And
38:12
Speaker 2: if we can't understand Jesus, and we can't understand those
38:16
Speaker 2: whom the Father gave to Jesus, whom Jesus then gave
38:19
Speaker 2: to the world as a mechanism for modeling of giving
38:23
Speaker 2: of ourselves for another, then we've done a great disservice
38:27
Speaker 2: to the testimony of Jesus. We've done a disservice to
38:31
Speaker 2: the next generation of youth, whether in or out of
38:34
Speaker 2: the church, And we've done a great disservice to the
38:37
Speaker 2: entirety of creation that we're called to serve. Rather than
38:39
Speaker 2: to domineer.
38:41
Speaker 1: Yeah, good ending man, we'll call it there. Act Like
38:49
Speaker 1: a Man by Marke Driscoll is not a book that
38:52
Speaker 1: I would necessarily recommend. We've used it here as a
38:55
Speaker 1: negative example, and I think hopefully you've seen some of
38:59
Speaker 1: the reasons why I don't actually think I picked the
39:02
Speaker 1: worst passage out of the book, although we definitely picked one.
39:06
Speaker 1: I would say that is characteristic of the overarching argument.
39:10
Speaker 1: He does have some interesting insight there at various points,
39:13
Speaker 1: but they're almost always sort of overshadowed by some of
39:17
Speaker 1: the language that I read today. It just gets hyper
39:22
Speaker 1: masculinized very quickly, and the temperate parts of the work
39:27
Speaker 1: are just overshadowed by that sort of bravado that comes through.
39:33
Speaker 1: So I don't recommend it, but as like I said,
39:37
Speaker 1: as a touch point into this conversation, I thought it
39:39
Speaker 1: was important to go through it. In the next episodes,
39:42
Speaker 1: we're going to talk a little bit more about what
39:45
Speaker 1: I would consider to be more nuanced positions, thoughtful positions,
39:51
Speaker 1: especially coming out of the recovering Biblical manhood and womanhood movement.
39:55
Speaker 1: So we're going to talk a little bit about Piper
39:56
Speaker 1: Grudam some of that work that you find in a
39:59
Speaker 1: volume that's called Covering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, which we
40:03
Speaker 1: probably won't agree with either and so, but it is
40:08
Speaker 1: a little bit more reasoned, a little bit more scholarly,
40:10
Speaker 1: and loses some of the bravado that we tended to
40:14
Speaker 1: see in what Driscoll wrote today. So, like I said,
40:18
Speaker 1: I wanted to do this as a touch point, but
40:19
Speaker 1: I don't want to stop here. We need to get
40:21
Speaker 1: into some of the other scholarship and really analyze what's
40:24
Speaker 1: going on there and talk a little bit about what
40:27
Speaker 1: the Bible is saying in these various passes that are
40:31
Speaker 1: treated and how the language of masculine and femininity skews
40:37
Speaker 1: what's being said there. So we'll jump into those in
40:40
Speaker 1: the next episode. Thanks Ashish again for being here, and
40:42
Speaker 1: thanks everybody for sticking with us. We'll catch you next
40:45
Speaker 1: time on Thinking Christian Take Care. I just want to
40:48
Speaker 1: take a second to thank the team at Life Audio
40:50
Speaker 1: for their partnership with us on the Thinking Christian podcast.
40:53
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40:55
Speaker 1: of other faith centered podcasts in their network. They've got
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