Latest / The Living Waters Podcast / Ep. 201 - How to Fight and Win Against the War on Men

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Ep. 201 - How to Fight and Win Against the War on Men · The Living Waters Podcast

• 1:04
  Emeal Zwayne: Tailoring, you're the best.
• 1:06
  Owen Strachan: It's a pleasure being on measure.
• 1:07
  Owen Strachan: That was a sick drop, you rhymed inexplicable on the spot.
• 1:11
  Owen Strachan: That's not easy, this pickable sick drop on the spot.
• 1:14
  Emeal Zwayne: Oh what?
• 1:15
  Emeal Zwayne: Come on, bro.
• 1:16
  Emeal Zwayne: That wasn't inexplicable, though.
• 1:17
  Emeal Zwayne: We got to do some freestyle Sitting in front of the TV.
• 1:21
  Owen Strachan: It's unclickable, lost the remote, unstickable, the charges they say about me unthinkable.
• 1:28
  Owen Strachan: You give me that thick milkshake undrinkable.
• 1:31
  Emeal Zwayne: Oh yeah, man, but you got to drink it raw.
• 1:34
  Emeal Zwayne: But you better get a real big straw.
• 1:36
  Emeal Zwayne: You know what?
• 1:36
  Emeal Zwayne: It's got stuff low and then it's all good to go down the esophagus.
• 1:40
  Emeal Zwayne: Oh, oh, oh with a softy esophagus.
• 1:42
  Owen Strachan: There's no stopping us, because you know that we got the top with dropping this.
• 1:45
  Emeal Zwayne: what you saved me, man.
• 1:50
  Owen Strachan: Oh, that's good, we're not battling, we're um.
• 1:52
  Owen Strachan: It's two bars to bar.
• 1:54
  Owen Strachan: Yeah, exactly that's what I like doing back and forth.
• 1:56
  Owen Strachan: Yeah, is this being recorded?
• 1:57
  Owen Strachan: It?
• 1:58
  Mark Spence: should be, by the way.
• 2:04
  Emeal Zwayne: You are dearly beloved.
• 2:06
  Emeal Zwayne: Listeners are no strangers to the glories of in and out Often as we talk about it here.
• 2:13
  Emeal Zwayne: But you know someone Really has an in and out problem when they begin to eat the in and out gift card.
• 2:22
  Emeal Zwayne: I shouldn't have told you.
• 2:23
  Emeal Zwayne: Do you know someone who did that right?
• 2:26
  Ray Comfort: I'm gonna spill the beans.
• 2:27
  Ray Comfort: I was coming up this bridge in the narrow pathway and I saw a guy With his stroller and his wife walking behind him and they got a kid in the stroller and I went past them and they moved over for me to go past on my electric bike with my dog and I thought, oh, this is very kind of them, I'll give them an in and out card each.
• 2:41
  Ray Comfort: They didn't speak English, never clue what I was saying when I said in and out.
• 2:45
  Ray Comfort: So I said Ham, burger, burger, ham.
• 2:50
  Ray Comfort: That was just crazy.
• 2:51
  Ray Comfort: So I got the in and out Coupons or vouchers or what are they called cards and I put them on my mouth and bit them.
• 2:58
  Ray Comfort: So dumb, what the what am I doing?
• 3:02
  Ray Comfort: They still didn't figure what I was saying, so I just said pesos.
• 3:04
  Ray Comfort: That's the only Spanish word I know and they took the cards and we left, and they left smiling Ray.
• 3:10
  Ray Comfort: Why, yeah, I don't know, just question, just thinking I'm crazy.
• 3:14
  Emeal Zwayne: I seriously wonder what they walked away thinking yeah, I would have loved to have heard their conversation.
• 3:19
  Ray Comfort: Yeah we just saw a man with a dog on a bike and the cycle sunglasses on the dog and he's eating.
• 3:23
  Ray Comfort: I'm getting cards that we that he tried eating.
• 3:26
  Ray Comfort: We've tried eating these cards and they don't taste.
• 3:30
  Emeal Zwayne: I was gonna say that's a lawsuit coming.
• 3:32
  Oscar Navarro: It must be a new ink.
• 3:36
  Emeal Zwayne: That's insane yeah right.
• 3:37
  Emeal Zwayne: How many, how many of those do you think you've given out now?
• 3:41
  Ray Comfort: and and 19,000, I think it's in total.
• 3:43
  Ray Comfort: Wow, no way, Thanks to Mark spend, so used to give out subway and he said no people in Southern California were like in and out, so I converted to in and out 19,000 that was just a one-way to one lady trying to unlock the belly.
• 3:59
  Mark Spence: Well, you gotta love the prices of in and out as well, so it's not just quality food.
• 4:02
  Mark Spence: Like my son, last night, 1130 comes in my room.
• 4:04
  Mark Spence: He says hey dad, I'm gonna go to in and out.
• 4:06
  Mark Spence: Do you want anything, right, I mean, so it's great food and it's really we feed our.
• 4:11
  Oscar Navarro: I feel like we base like Whether a meal is expensive or cheap, based in and in and out is our standard.
• 4:16
  Oscar Navarro: So the family for like $28.
• 4:19
  Oscar Navarro: Yeah so we go somewhere else and spend more.
• 4:21
  Oscar Navarro: It's too expensive standard.
• 4:23
  Ray Comfort: Yeah, just like to stop for a minute and thank you sponsors.
• 4:27
  Mark Spence: You know Laura recently said you know, mark, you're the cheapest guy in the world and I'm just not buying it.
• 4:35
  Ray Comfort: All right, all right, friends, look knock it in this sound like that crazy man in the Halloween video.
• 4:43
  Emeal Zwayne: I Love it.
• 4:44
  Emeal Zwayne: That thing lives on all right fray arms.
• 4:46
  Emeal Zwayne: We got to be quick today because Oscar, mark and I were recently at G3, the wonderful conference in Atlanta 8300 people.
• 4:57
  Emeal Zwayne: We had a booth there and we got to interview some of our dearest friends most of the speakers, actually I don't see any dears there, venison friends and you're gonna see these or hear these sprinkled all throughout.
• 5:10
  Emeal Zwayne: I will see where we're gonna put them.
• 5:11
  Emeal Zwayne: Some will be consecutive, some not.
• 5:13
  Emeal Zwayne: But first a comment.
• 5:14
  Emeal Zwayne: This is from MD you o, cf e, md kufa, see, or something like that.
• 5:22
  Emeal Zwayne: I might have to unfollow.
• 5:24
  Emeal Zwayne: I absolutely love listening to you all, but after the criticism of elf I might have to stop Just kidding, but elf is seriously my fave.
• 5:33
  Emeal Zwayne: Oh boy, you all are a blessing to listen to.
• 5:36
  Emeal Zwayne: The fact that you all are unafraid to speak, the truth challenges me to Pray to be more bold as a witness.
• 5:42
  Emeal Zwayne: Thank you for all you do in this ministry.
• 5:46
  Emeal Zwayne: Thank you, sorry that you like elf.
• 5:49
  Emeal Zwayne: That's a great movie, but now your marks friend In mind, oh, oh, I know so it was a movie.
• 5:54
  Ray Comfort: I sing in that idiot thing on television about 200 years ago.
• 5:57
  Ray Comfort: This elf three, crude puppet thing from outer space, oh Alf.
• 6:03
  Emeal Zwayne: Say I said elf, elf, elf.
• 6:08
  Ray Comfort: Alfie or out, I don't know.
• 6:09
  Ray Comfort: Alfie was a movie that came out he was only the cat.
• 6:12
  Mark Spence: That's why I love home.
• 6:14
  Emeal Zwayne: Yeah, all right, france.
• 6:15
  Emeal Zwayne: This podcast is brought to you by the tract sample pack, a sample of the overwhelming majority of the Tracts we carry.
• 6:22
  Emeal Zwayne: Make sure to check it out.
• 6:23
  Emeal Zwayne: Along with the living waters mug, they have a study Bible all at living waters, yes, and with that beautiful song we introduce our dear brother Owen Stran.
• 6:33
  Emeal Zwayne: Mispronounced, as struck by many, that's how pastor Philip, our pastor, pronounces it.
• 6:39
  Emeal Zwayne: It's cuz he's so he's hilarious me, I don't know what Stran is, I'm sure no, not string your past on.
• 6:45
  Emeal Zwayne: Yes, friends, anyhow, we had a wonderful time with Owen.
• 6:49
  Emeal Zwayne: We talked about how to fight and win against the war on men, connected to his new book, the war on men, which, as you'll hear, is available now for you to get.
• 7:00
  Emeal Zwayne: So get it without any further ado.
• 7:02
  Emeal Zwayne: Here's our friend oh and you.
• 7:05
  Emeal Zwayne: Well, friends, he is no stranger to you, he's the bro you know because he's got that rhyming flow the rapping professor, oh and strand.
• 7:18
  Oscar Navarro: Does everybody know about this hidden gift of yours?
• 7:20
  Oscar Navarro: Is it well documented?
• 7:23
  Oscar Navarro: What?
• 7:23
  Emeal Zwayne: You didn't know Steve Lawson's beatboxer, oh my word.
• 7:27
  Owen Strachan: That would be epic.
• 7:28
  Owen Strachan: That would be lit, as they say.
• 7:30
  Owen Strachan: It's a well hidden gift.
• 7:32
  Mark Spence: Let's put it that way.
• 7:34
  Emeal Zwayne: It's well hidden, it's exposed now.
• 7:36
  Emeal Zwayne: That video you got on there.
• 7:38
  Emeal Zwayne: Man, you still got that video up.
• 7:39
  Emeal Zwayne: I don't know.
• 7:41
  Emeal Zwayne: I'm not sure that was epic.
• 7:43
  Emeal Zwayne: How does it go?
• 7:45
  Owen Strachan: I plead the fifth on that so for people who don't know.
• 7:48
  Oscar Navarro: what are you guys referring to here?
• 7:50
  Oscar Navarro: Your guys' mutual talents?
• 7:53
  Emeal Zwayne: He dropped some rhymes all the time, inexplicable.
• 7:57
  Owen Strachan: Aplicable, aplicable Unstickable.
• 8:00
  Owen Strachan: Yeah, keep going easy.
• 8:03
  Emeal Zwayne: It's kind of like a skateboard.
• 8:04
  Emeal Zwayne: It's a little bit flip-flop-able.
• 8:05
  Emeal Zwayne: You got to get on it, you got to go flow down the street, you got to go with the beat.
• 8:08
  Emeal Zwayne: It's extraordinarily neat.
• 8:11
  Oscar Navarro: So for those who are listening and don't realize, you just made that up on the spot.
• 8:15
  Emeal Zwayne: Freestyle oh and oh and inspires me.
• 8:18
  Emeal Zwayne: And, by the way I said, steve Lawson beatboxes for him, but he does it expositorily.
• 8:23
  Mark Spence: Yeah, yeah.
• 8:24
  Emeal Zwayne: Yeah, positorily, claws by claws.
• 8:27
  Emeal Zwayne: Yeah, well, oh, and it's great to have you with us, man, thank you.
• 8:29
  Emeal Zwayne: This isn't this really isn't like an interview.
• 8:32
  Emeal Zwayne: This is fellowship for us.
• 8:33
  Emeal Zwayne: Brother Brohood, yeah, and those of you that listen to the podcast, you know we did a few episodes with oh and back in the day, yeah, but he's back, friends, because today his book drops how to fight and win against the war on men, and that's what we want to talk about today, bro, was that, was that like a labor of love, that book?
• 8:54
  Owen Strachan: Yeah, this book has been a long time coming.
• 8:56
  Owen Strachan: For me, the War on Men it's with Salem Books, and I was the president of the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood for a while, yeah, and so got to work on these issues starting in 2012.
• 9:08
  Owen Strachan: I was executive director and then president, so I've been concerned about men for a long time and a lot of people have.
• 9:15
  Owen Strachan: That's not like a rocket science reality for us to see that men are struggling.
• 9:19
  Owen Strachan: Men are struggling tremendously.
• 9:20
  Owen Strachan: Today, men are told that they're toxic, and it's one thing for us to hear that as mature, adult men who know how to handle ourselves and take arrows.
• 9:27
  Owen Strachan: It's another thing for boys and young men to hear that they're toxic.
• 9:31
  Emeal Zwayne: Yeah.
• 9:31
  Owen Strachan: That they're lower than women.
• 9:33
  Owen Strachan: There's something wrong with them that is not wrong with little girls.
• 9:36
  Owen Strachan: So I just have a burden, a pastoral burden, an evangelistic burden, you could say, to help men and help boys and help young men.
• 9:43
  Oscar Navarro: I'm excited you're writing this book.
• 9:45
  Oscar Navarro: I've read of boys and men and I've read the War on Boys and those.
• 9:49
  Oscar Navarro: Some things that those books highlight is exactly what you're talking about.
• 9:53
  Oscar Navarro: We think, like what's the big deal?
• 9:55
  Oscar Navarro: People maybe don't realize the stats, like the dropout rate is significantly higher for boys and girls in high school.
• 10:02
  Oscar Navarro: The rate of successful suicide for men is significantly higher than girls.
• 10:07
  Oscar Navarro: Women are divorcing men at a greater rate than men are divorcing women.
• 10:11
  Oscar Navarro: Yeah, you know SAT scores, college admission, like I mean the stat line from about 12 years old until 25, 30 prison rates all of it is significantly greater for men than it is for women.
• 10:25
  Oscar Navarro: What's why?
• 10:27
  Oscar Navarro: What's going on?
• 10:28
  Owen Strachan: Man?
• 10:28
  Owen Strachan: That's a great question and what I talk about in the War on Men is basically that feminism has succeeded, would be a quick answer there.
• 10:37
  Owen Strachan: So feminism launched an attack on biblical manhood and womanhood about 60 years ago, later stage feminism, that is we might call it second or third wave and it's brought into today, the idea in broader culture that again it's basically not good to be a strong man.
• 10:54
  Owen Strachan: That's, in particular, what's targeted, not just general manhood.
• 10:57
  Owen Strachan: That's targeted, yes, but being a strong man, being assertive, being a risk-taker, telling other guys to man up or be strong, or something like that.
• 11:05
  Owen Strachan: You can go on Brown University, for example I cite this in the War on Men, this book and you can find a page on toxic masculinity and that's how they define toxic masculinity.
• 11:14
  Owen Strachan: The way probably the four of us have raised sons, in so far as we have To be assertive, to be a leader, to hold doors for women, those kind of things, those behaviors are now called toxic.
• 11:24
  Owen Strachan: So basically, what that reduces to, any man who is showing any strength or initiative or leadership should step back and not be that way and actually should be rewired so he doesn't do that and that is absolutely violent to the nature of a man.
• 11:40
  Owen Strachan: It's not that a man always has to lead or always has to have the most to say, or something like that, but it is wired into men from God himself that when there is a threat on premises, when there is something that goes bang in the night downstairs, a boy or a man wants to respond to that, wants to show that he's a man, wants to show that he's strong.
• 12:00
  Owen Strachan: That's 1st Kings 2-2.
• 12:01
  Owen Strachan: Be strong and show yourself a man.
• 12:02
  Owen Strachan: David Esalaman.
• 12:03
  Mark Spence: Sounds like you're mansplaining.
• 12:04
  Mark Spence: We were down in Huntington Beach and I got into conversation evangelizing, and the subject of abortion came up.
• 12:13
  Mark Spence: The people I was talking to brought up the subject of abortion and so I started to respond.
• 12:18
  Mark Spence: And the lady said sounds like you're mansplaining right now.
• 12:21
  Mark Spence: And I was very tempted to say what is mansplaining.
• 12:25
  Mark Spence: And as soon as she explained that I wanted to say it sounds like you're woman's explaining.
• 12:28
  Mark Spence: So it's so one-sided that we are always in the wrong, no matter what.
• 12:33
  Mark Spence: There's nothing you can say, there's nothing you can do.
• 12:35
  Mark Spence: You are just wrong.
• 12:37
  Mark Spence: And now you need to be silenced, unless you're going to celebrate me in my opinion, and that's even the way it goes in the church.
• 12:43
  Owen Strachan: You know, the Mother's Day sermon will be praising the very essence of womanhood and the Father's Day sermon will be you idiot fathers, do better.
• 12:51
  Owen Strachan: Now there's all sorts of things that men need to work on.
• 12:53
  Owen Strachan: Men are sinners.
• 12:54
  Owen Strachan: This book isn't soft-gloving sinful manhood.
• 12:57
  Owen Strachan: We're saying no, we need to be changed, we're headed for hell.
• 13:00
  Owen Strachan: We need the Gospel of divine grace, we need the blood of Jesus Christ to cleanse us.
• 13:03
  Owen Strachan: But women and men are equally sinful.
• 13:06
  Owen Strachan: There's not one that's worse than the other, contrary what our culture says.
• 13:10
  Emeal Zwayne: You know what excites me about this book, owen, is you're writing from a scholar's perspective, but knowing you personally, I know that you bring it down to street level.
• 13:21
  Emeal Zwayne: That's so important.
• 13:22
  Emeal Zwayne: And for those of you that don't know Dr Owen Strand, he's a Provost and Research Professor of Theology at Grace Bible Theological Seminary.
• 13:29
  Emeal Zwayne: So I'm glad that those two elements are going to be married together, no doubt in the book.
• 13:34
  Emeal Zwayne: And you know, I want to do a few things during our time together.
• 13:38
  Emeal Zwayne: I want you to kind of talk about the war on men and define it for us.
• 13:45
  Emeal Zwayne: So like, what is it exactly?
• 13:46
  Emeal Zwayne: Then I want us to get into the roots of it.
• 13:48
  Emeal Zwayne: We want to know the history.
• 13:50
  Emeal Zwayne: Where did this come from?
• 13:51
  Emeal Zwayne: You touched on it lightly here a moment ago, but I want you to kind of get deeper into that.
• 13:54
  Emeal Zwayne: And then I want you, lastly, to give us a battle plan, like how do we fight, how do we counter this?
• 14:00
  Emeal Zwayne: First, as men who are called to be leaders in the church, leaders in our community, leaders in our families, how do we fight it and turn the tide?
• 14:10
  Emeal Zwayne: So let's start with what you mean exactly by the war on men.
• 14:15
  Owen Strachan: I mean that the very idea that manhood is a God created and good reality is militated against.
• 14:23
  Owen Strachan: Our culture opposes strong manhood and it opposes it, as I said, primarily first, from that angle of masculinity is toxic today.
• 14:32
  Owen Strachan: So if you're teaching boys and young men that they are inherently toxic, that is you declaring war on their God-given nature as a man.
• 14:40
  Owen Strachan: That's not something that, by the way, a 10-year-old boy think of, a 10-year-old boy in a public school, not even a Christian.
• 14:46
  Owen Strachan: How is he going to know how to respond to that?
• 14:48
  Owen Strachan: What is he going to say to that?
• 14:49
  Owen Strachan: Is he going to quote the opposite side of the gender theorist and say, well, actually, just say to study, manhood is not toxic?
• 14:55
  Owen Strachan: I would cite Smith and Jovonsky on this.
• 14:58
  Owen Strachan: No no he's just going to hear that he's not going to know what to do.
• 15:01
  Owen Strachan: Our culture, therefore, is stifling boys.
• 15:04
  Owen Strachan: Our culture is opposing boys.
• 15:06
  Owen Strachan: Boys don't fit in our culture.
• 15:08
  Owen Strachan: Increasingly, you see a war on men and on boys when they are prescribed medication, for example, for different conditions.
• 15:15
  Owen Strachan: Some boys need that, but a lot of boys are just being boyish, in a school setting, for example, but they're in trouble perpetually.
• 15:23
  Owen Strachan: They don't have spaces in which to be a boy.
• 15:26
  Owen Strachan: You recognize in terms of factors and causes.
• 15:28
  Owen Strachan: Lastly, that again, feminism has had a massive effect on our culture.
• 15:33
  Owen Strachan: Think about how women, 10 years ago, by Cheryl Sandberg, were called to lean in.
• 15:36
  Owen Strachan: What she was saying is women should lead.
• 15:38
  Owen Strachan: That's the idea.
• 15:40
  Owen Strachan: We're not saying.
• 15:40
  Owen Strachan: There's never a context where a woman can lead in business or something like this, but what I am saying is that men are hearing in that kind of call to not lean in, to lean back.
• 15:50
  Owen Strachan: Look at the superheroes and all sorts of movies.
• 15:52
  Owen Strachan: Now, male superheroes are saved, usually regularly, by female superheroes.
• 15:56
  Owen Strachan: Often the female superhero weighs a buck ten maybe, but she's the one saving this 220-pound man.
• 16:01
  Owen Strachan: It's not that a woman never saves a man, but there's just a cultural narrative that's very strong today.
• 16:11
  Oscar Navarro: Why do women mean biblically masculine men?
• 16:14
  Oscar Navarro: How does this benefit women and children?
• 16:16
  Owen Strachan: That is such a good question.
• 16:18
  Owen Strachan: You think about the song about 30 years ago where have all the cowboys gone?
• 16:21
  Owen Strachan: Which was an early cry from deep within feminist circles of a recognition that something's being lost.
• 16:27
  Owen Strachan: Wait a minute, this whole modern thing where women enter the same roles as men, that's what feminism argued for basically in its second wave and its third wave.
• 16:38
  Owen Strachan: Women are equally head of the home in the church.
• 16:41
  Owen Strachan: Women are equally pastors in terms of Christian circles.
• 16:44
  Owen Strachan: Women are equally providers and protectors.
• 16:46
  Owen Strachan: Men are not called to that role in a unique way.
• 16:48
  Owen Strachan: But that song that I cite where have all the cowboys gone?
• 16:51
  Owen Strachan: Is this woman saying wait a minute, I don't have strong men around me anymore.
• 16:56
  Owen Strachan: Where did they go?
• 16:57
  Owen Strachan: There was a TikTok video just a few months ago that basically said the same message.
• 17:02
  Owen Strachan: It was this young woman saying she wanted, basically in so many words, a strong man, but she didn't want him to be conservative.
• 17:09
  Owen Strachan: You just recognize that there's actually a lot of women out there who want a man who is strong for them, who in some form at least leads them, protects them and provides for them.
• 17:18
  Owen Strachan: But then they're trained by the culture not to want the ideology, the theology, the truth that creates those kind of men.
• 17:26
  Owen Strachan: So women are in a very bad predicament today.
• 17:30
  Emeal Zwayne: And even from the protector standpoint.
• 17:33
  Emeal Zwayne: I saw a video on this recently that was just brilliant, where a man was saying look, women these days, feminists especially don't really realize what they're asking for, because in the end, if men pull back from being protectors, it's going to be the demise of our society and women are going to be in a woeful position.
• 17:54
  Owen Strachan: That's really what Jordan Peterson has said.
• 17:57
  Owen Strachan: He's called for men to be dangerous and he doesn't mean for men to be dangerous against the innocent.
• 18:01
  Owen Strachan: He doesn't mean to go attack somebody and show you're dangerous.
• 18:04
  Owen Strachan: He has pointed out that men need to have the capacity to defend themselves and others.
• 18:09
  Owen Strachan: There needs to be a controlled danger about them and I would argue I think that's actually found in Scripture too.
• 18:15
  Owen Strachan: I think a man is called to act like a man.
• 18:18
  Owen Strachan: So you recognize there is a strength in a godly man, in a man who is saved by divine grace.
• 18:23
  Owen Strachan: The weakness that Paul speaks of in 1 Corinthians, 9 and other texts is not Paul saying literally like I can't lift my Bible off the shelf or something, or I can't even write on a piece of paper.
• 18:35
  Owen Strachan: Paul is saying I'm spiritually weak.
• 18:38
  Owen Strachan: But then look at what Paul does.
• 18:40
  Owen Strachan: He goes on these four massive missionary journeys.
• 18:42
  Owen Strachan: So you've got to read weakness in the right way and we need to just know that.
• 18:47
  Owen Strachan: Yes, if men are being called to be soft and passive and live in a plastic world and have a plastic sex slave on pornography on their phone, and these not a wife, not build a family, have a plastic vocation, not build a real job, these kind of things, then what's going to happen is not that women are going to thrive.
• 19:04
  Owen Strachan: Women aren't getting safer with soft men everywhere around us.
• 19:08
  Owen Strachan: It's actually becoming much more dangerous because the evil men will keep rising and proliferating and there are no protectors left where all the cowboys go.
• 19:16
  Oscar Navarro: That actually leads me to my next question, which is I got to read the book very quickly because I got it like two days ago, so I'd like to have finished it.
• 19:24
  Oscar Navarro: But I noticed that you bring up Jordan Peterson, Joe Rogan and things of this nature.
• 19:29
  Oscar Navarro: You bring them up in a good, but you also seem to pause before calling them the answer, and I like that you do that.
• 19:36
  Oscar Navarro: Why is the Jordan Peterson's, the Joe Rogan's not enough?
• 19:40
  Oscar Navarro: In other words, what is it about biblical masculinity that we don't find in the vacuum that is being experienced right now?
• 19:50
  Owen Strachan: Those figures and others, the manosphere.
• 19:52
  Owen Strachan: They say some truths about manhood.
• 19:54
  Owen Strachan: They have a common grace purchase, I would say on certain realities of manhood.
• 19:59
  Owen Strachan: They call men to discipline, to courage, to self-control in the right sense, to strength.
• 20:05
  Owen Strachan: But ultimately, the only way you can inhabit manhood rightly and to God's glory is to know Jesus Christ.
• 20:12
  Owen Strachan: And this is ultimately where the conversation goes.
• 20:14
  Owen Strachan: It goes to Christ.
• 20:15
  Owen Strachan: Christ was both tender, calling the little children to him Matthew 19, 13 to 15, and he was tough, making a whip of cords in the temple, john 2.
• 20:24
  Owen Strachan: So that's ultimately the emblem of Christianity for men and women alike.
• 20:29
  Owen Strachan: But especially when you're a man and you're looking at Christ's life, you're like, oh, by the power of the gospel.
• 20:34
  Owen Strachan: That's what's missing, oscar.
• 20:35
  Owen Strachan: It's the gospel that's missing from all these other discussions.
• 20:38
  Owen Strachan: So we don't just have a little bitty contribution to make as Christians in the manhood conversation or the womanhood one.
• 20:43
  Owen Strachan: We have the contribution to make.
• 20:46
  Mark Spence: And speaking of that contribution, when you write a book, it's because you have something you want to say, you want to get out there.
• 20:51
  Mark Spence: Is there a portion of your book, is there a chapter, where you say to yourself this is the part that I'm really excited to get out there, that I want people to learn, whether it be educational, inspirational, equipping but this is the part that you think is missing inside the church, or there's a better explanation on how to handle that part?
• 21:12
  Owen Strachan: Yeah, that's also a good question.
• 21:13
  Owen Strachan: Well, chapter seven and eight cover realities that Christians don't talk a lot about.
• 21:17
  Owen Strachan: So chapter seven covers the physical distinctiveness of men, and you'll hear pastors in our circles conservative circles, reform circles however you want to frame that Bible believing circles and they'll talk a little bit about biblical manhood sometimes, but you'll rarely ever hear, for example, this statistic Men have on average 2,000 percent more testosterone than women.
• 21:39
  Owen Strachan: I think sometimes we're scared of those kind of stats like oh no, I'm quoting signs, I'm not quoting them.
• 21:45
  Owen Strachan: Is that allowed?
• 21:45
  Owen Strachan: Can?
• 21:46
  Ray Comfort: I do that.
• 21:47
  Owen Strachan: And we want to be careful about our authority.
• 21:49
  Owen Strachan: Right, Bible is our ultimate authority, but all truth is God's truth.
• 21:52
  Owen Strachan: And in that little stat, men on average have 50 percent more upper body strength than women.
• 21:59
  Owen Strachan: There's a second one.
• 22:00
  Mark Spence: Unless you're easy, that is 75 percent.
• 22:04
  Owen Strachan: Well, I had you covered.
• 22:05
  Owen Strachan: What's getting hot up in the conference hall?
• 22:08
  Owen Strachan: Yeah, I would just say those kind of stats, those are on average.
• 22:13
  Owen Strachan: Right, there are women who can dunk a basketball and I can't, or whatever they can far outspread me, but on average.
• 22:18
  Owen Strachan: And that tells you something about how God has wired men.
• 22:21
  Owen Strachan: But our culture hates all those kind of distinctives.
• 22:25
  Owen Strachan: And then in chapter eight I talk about what men are wired for and I say things like men do their duty, men build a vocation.
• 22:32
  Owen Strachan: Men show up when no one else does.
• 22:35
  Owen Strachan: Men are ferocious against evil, even a sentence like that.
• 22:38
  Owen Strachan: You say that in even a church context and people are like ferocious.
• 22:42
  Emeal Zwayne: Are you allowed to say that it's like?
• 22:44
  Owen Strachan: yes, when there is evil on premises and no one else is stepping up to handle it, you set your jaw and you go against it in the power of God.
• 22:51
  Owen Strachan: That's what we need in the public square, for example.
• 22:53
  Owen Strachan: That's what you guys represent, but in a loving way.
• 22:55
  Owen Strachan: I don't mean hate, flesh and blood.
• 22:57
  Owen Strachan: But we've got to recognize we have a foe.
• 22:59
  Owen Strachan: His name is Satan.
• 23:00
  Owen Strachan: We have to stand against it.
• 23:01
  Owen Strachan: There are so many men who are just living a passive life, even in the church, and they're not standing up for their wife, their children, their church and so on.
• 23:10
  Emeal Zwayne: Yeah, the image that comes to my mind when I think about what the world is trying to do to men is like trying to shear the main off of every lion.
• 23:21
  Emeal Zwayne: Hmm, ooh and just no, no, no, lions, you can't be wearing the mains.
• 23:27
  Emeal Zwayne: You know that's offensive and it's like.
• 23:29
  Emeal Zwayne: Are you kidding me?
• 23:30
  Emeal Zwayne: This is who God has designed.
• 23:31
  Mark Spence: There's no way he just came up with that.
• 23:33
  Mark Spence: You are not that smart I did so humble in me.
• 23:36
  Emeal Zwayne: Put that in the book, bro, If you can next Put that in the book.
• 23:39
  Owen Strachan: You don't have to actually Revise it.
• 23:41
  Emeal Zwayne: But you know what I'm saying.
• 23:41
  Emeal Zwayne: But that's what it's like.
• 23:44
  Owen Strachan: Yeah.
• 23:45
  Emeal Zwayne: And the bully pulpit of the world.
• 23:46
  Emeal Zwayne: Man is so, so effective.
• 23:50
  Ray Comfort: Yes.
• 23:51
  Emeal Zwayne: And this has been being preached.
• 23:52
  Emeal Zwayne: I mean I've said for years how television, even comedy, you go back to the Simpsons.
• 23:59
  Emeal Zwayne: Right there's Homer the idiot, the doofus, oh dad, always being made fun of.
• 24:04
  Emeal Zwayne: I mean that seems funny and cute, but man that preaches that impacts people there.
• 24:11
  Emeal Zwayne: It is All over the place.
• 24:12
  Owen Strachan: So true, it's had a tremendous impact.
• 24:14
  Owen Strachan: All these factors, that's why the war on men.
• 24:17
  Owen Strachan: I isolate factors, but honestly there's almost too many to count.
• 24:20
  Owen Strachan: There's so many factors against what I call strong manhood, godly manhood.
• 24:24
  Owen Strachan: You think about these videos now that are seemingly on our social media every hour, where there's some fight in public, some awful brawl breaking out and what do you see so frequently on camera?
• 24:36
  Owen Strachan: People standing around right, Just standing or filming it for shock value, and a lot of those people are men.
• 24:46
  Mark Spence: Yeah that's right.
• 24:46
  Owen Strachan: So something has profoundly changed.
• 24:48
  Owen Strachan: Oh, that's crazy, when men won't step up.
• 24:50
  Owen Strachan: But see, this is the deal.
• 24:51
  Owen Strachan: You can get really mad at men for not stepping up right, or boys, or young men.
• 24:55
  Owen Strachan: You can go, you idiot boys.
• 24:56
  Owen Strachan: And that used to be the way Christians were talking in the reformed and conserved as space about 15 years ago.
• 25:01
  Owen Strachan: You know, just rants and tirades against men.
• 25:04
  Owen Strachan: Here's what I realize and here's what I try to bring to the table in this book the War on Men.
• 25:08
  Owen Strachan: Men have been coached that way.
• 25:10
  Owen Strachan: Men are penalized now if they step up.
• 25:13
  Owen Strachan: Men have had a needle stuck in their neck and they've been anesthetized.
• 25:18
  Owen Strachan: Men have had the mane sheared off of them.
• 25:20
  Owen Strachan: You're exactly right.
• 25:20
  Owen Strachan: So why are you expecting men to be courageous when they've been told?
• 25:24
  Emeal Zwayne: not to be.
• 25:25
  Emeal Zwayne: Yeah, and at the same time, mark, you remember, years ago we had that representative from the church of Satan come and we did, you know, ray did an interview with him.
• 25:35
  Emeal Zwayne: This guy shows up and he was, he was a homosexual, very effeminate.
• 25:40
  Emeal Zwayne: He came to mind recently and I looked them up and I was like in shock, right, and this is speaking to the vacuum that Oscar referenced a little bit ago.
• 25:48
  Emeal Zwayne: And so I look them up and this guy is like rip, he's huge.
• 25:54
  Emeal Zwayne: I go on and watch one of us, yeah, one of me.
• 25:57
  Owen Strachan: Yeah.
• 25:59
  Emeal Zwayne: And I watched the video of his.
• 26:00
  Emeal Zwayne: He's become like this big voice now in the in the you know movement for restoring masculinity.
• 26:07
  Mark Spence: Like yeah, that guy.
• 26:08
  Emeal Zwayne: That's him.
• 26:08
  Emeal Zwayne: Yeah, and I was in shock, but it really speaks to the vacuum, don't you think?
• 26:13
  Emeal Zwayne: Oh, and in that people are now beginning to say, hey, we don't like this, but unfortunately they're willing to accept fully some of these guys that that really have some issues.
• 26:26
  Emeal Zwayne: They're speaking like an Andrew Tate as an example.
• 26:30
  Emeal Zwayne: You know it's like are you serious?
• 26:32
  Emeal Zwayne: But it's like there's such a vacuum.
• 26:34
  Emeal Zwayne: There's a problem, but they're not going to the right place where the gospel is included.
• 26:39
  Owen Strachan: That's where I was going next with what you were setting up there.
• 26:41
  Owen Strachan: I was going to go to Andrew Tate because men want to be strong.
• 26:44
  Owen Strachan: Every man wants to be strong innately.
• 26:47
  Owen Strachan: Every boy does.
• 26:47
  Owen Strachan: I don't mean that's going to go right in every case.
• 26:50
  Owen Strachan: In fact, in a lot of cases, because of our sin nature, it's going to go very much wrong.
• 26:54
  Owen Strachan: That's why you have gangs, that's why you have terrible activity among kids.
• 26:57
  Owen Strachan: You know that takes place.
• 26:58
  Owen Strachan: But fundamentally men don't want to be weak, men want to be strong.
• 27:01
  Owen Strachan: So what does Andrew Tate project on his social media feed?
• 27:04
  Owen Strachan: He projects owning Bugatti's beautiful women on his arm, anything he wants, and he walks around.
• 27:10
  Owen Strachan: You know he's kind of an impressive guy, he's a kickboxer, whatever he is, and that has a very powerful effect on young men in particular.
• 27:18
  Owen Strachan: Because but think about it, think about it not just critically but sympathetically for the audience the audience has been told not to be strong.
• 27:26
  Owen Strachan: The audience has been told to just sit on the couch and get puffed up and eat chips and not steward your body and watch porn and not go to work and all these things.
• 27:35
  Owen Strachan: And so what happens when you've got this muscled, ripped guy speaking into a camera and talking, by the way, very strong, very assertively, that's going to speak to you.
• 27:45
  Owen Strachan: Here's the deal.
• 27:46
  Owen Strachan: I call this form of manhood in the book exaggerated manhood.
• 27:50
  Owen Strachan: It's Samson manhood.
• 27:51
  Owen Strachan: It's not actually biblical manhood.
• 27:54
  Owen Strachan: It has a kind of element of it in the strength, but it's not virtuous strength, it's not godly strength.
• 28:02
  Mark Spence: So it's a good deal.
• 28:03
  Mark Spence: So how do we redeem that?
• 28:03
  Mark Spence: How do we change that?
• 28:04
  Mark Spence: How do we grab ahold of the attention of somebody who looks up to Andrew Tate and says, okay, well, I want to be like that, I guess?
• 28:12
  Mark Spence: How do we pour into the next generation of kids my kids, you're up from your boy.
• 28:16
  Mark Spence: What do we say?
• 28:18
  Mark Spence: What do we do?
• 28:18
  Mark Spence: Where do we go?
• 28:19
  Mark Spence: How do we lead?
• 28:20
  Owen Strachan: Great question.
• 28:20
  Owen Strachan: I think we make clear to them that that instinct in them to be strong, to be a risk taker, to be aggressive boys are wired differently.
• 28:29
  Owen Strachan: Right, they're not all made to be high school quarterback of college D1 athlete.
• 28:35
  Owen Strachan: But we want to make clear that that instinct in you to want to be strong, to want to grow, to want to take responsibility, that's good, that's.
• 28:42
  Mark Spence: God given.
• 28:43
  Owen Strachan: That's God given, that's a divine call to you actually to rise from being a boy 1 Corinthians 13, 11, and become a man, but not just in a general way, not by going out in the woods and banging drums or you and your dad having a nighting ceremony or something like this with a sword.
• 28:58
  Owen Strachan: That's not bad, necessarily, but the way you grow up from a boy to a man is you, by God's grace, you know Christ and then you seek to inhabit leader, protector, provider, self-control, being strong against evil and strong for the good.
• 29:14
  Owen Strachan: And that's when you are locking into manhood.
• 29:18
  Mark Spence: It's all grace and power Is that how you model it as well for your boy.
• 29:22
  Mark Spence: I mean, is that what you do?
• 29:23
  Mark Spence: I heard Todd Freel once say that your children should know that you're the greatest sinner in the house, and the way he defined that was it's because you're always pointing things out that you've done wrong, and then you're pointing to the grace of God.
• 29:36
  Mark Spence: Yeah Right, so it's not that you're actually sinning.
• 29:40
  Mark Spence: You know more than everybody else, but you are modeling what it's like to be a man, right?
• 29:44
  Mark Spence: I've often said that it's not our job to raise Christian children.
• 29:47
  Mark Spence: It's our job to model what a Christian is for our children.
• 29:53
  Owen Strachan: Yeah, two things I say to my son, just to flesh this out.
• 29:55
  Owen Strachan: I like what you just said.
• 29:56
  Owen Strachan: I'll say to my son Dads eat last when there's like food on the table for the small group meal or whatever it is, you know, at the potluck at church.
• 30:04
  Owen Strachan: We still have a potluck at my church and I'm at the end of the line, and I don't mean by that.
• 30:08
  Owen Strachan: Look at your dad.
• 30:08
  Owen Strachan: Amazing is I'm like no, this is because women go first, boys do not rush to the table.
• 30:13
  Owen Strachan: And then when I'm on a trip for speaking, for ministry, as you men do as well to some extent, I'll say to Gavin you're the man of the house.
• 30:21
  Owen Strachan: He's 12 years old, so he's not technically deadly in force yet, but you know, I'm coaching him into that right.
• 30:27
  Owen Strachan: It has to be modeled and, yes, you have to be humble in this.
• 30:30
  Owen Strachan: This isn't just brow beating your son.
• 30:32
  Owen Strachan: This is what older generations, I think, didn't understand.
• 30:35
  Owen Strachan: They thought the way to get your son to be a man was just to whip him into shape all the time.
• 30:40
  Owen Strachan: I think they missed one small element love, yeah, love.
• 30:45
  Oscar Navarro: That's so important man I've shared on this podcast.
• 30:48
  Oscar Navarro: Before I had an abusive stepfather who wanted to raise me up to be like a little street fighter you know what I mean Like I wasn't a man until I got hold of my own.
• 30:56
  Oscar Navarro: He taught me to punch first, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
• 30:59
  Oscar Navarro: There was an element of that most of that that was truly toxic, like in the actual intention of the word.
• 31:08
  Oscar Navarro: And yet I love what you're saying, because it's so important that we raise our children in the smallest of ways to start to become men.
• 31:16
  Oscar Navarro: I love what you just said.
• 31:17
  Oscar Navarro: I can remember my son like I would do the same thing ever since he's been a baby.
• 31:22
  Oscar Navarro: He's 12 as well and it's like when I'm gone, you're the man of the house.
• 31:26
  Oscar Navarro: And that started really small, practically.
• 31:28
  Oscar Navarro: It started small and it was like this if there's a spider, who's the one that kills it?
• 31:32
  Oscar Navarro: When dad's gone, it was him.
• 31:34
  Oscar Navarro: And I remember one time he was like two years old, still in diapers, I think so, maybe younger than two, and there was a spider and Kelly, my wife, calls me and she's like, hey, he's a little nervous, you know.
• 31:42
  Oscar Navarro: And I'm like, yeah, I know, I'll walk him through it.
• 31:44
  Oscar Navarro: It wasn't that Kelly can't kill the spider, it was that I wanted him to see his role and now, when I get home from a trip, he's like I killed three spiders.
• 31:56
  Mark Spence: I guess literally he didn't even know.
• 31:57
  Oscar Navarro: Yeah, so those little ways, those little victories for boys are so crucial, and something that actually our producer, eddie, did with his kids was take them through sort of a process of becoming a man when they become teenagers, which is something our culture has lost, like the movement from being a boy to being a man.
• 32:17
  Oscar Navarro: How can we, for the parents out there with teenage boys, what are rhythms, what are practices that we can do with our kids to help prepare them for manhood?
• 32:29
  Owen Strachan: Yeah, I love that.
• 32:30
  Owen Strachan: Eddie did that, and I think that's really valuable and helpful.
• 32:33
  Owen Strachan: There's not a biblical call at a certain age, you know.
• 32:35
  Owen Strachan: It's like the Jews have the bar mitzvah at age 12.
• 32:38
  Owen Strachan: We don't have that in the New Testament as the call, but I do think we recognize that we're continually training our son to understand especially as he gets into the middle years, preteen years that he is now a young man.
• 32:52
  Owen Strachan: I even think just doing that is huge for the way a boy thinks about himself Like son.
• 32:59
  Owen Strachan: You are not I say this to him sometimes you are not a five-year-old.
• 33:02
  Owen Strachan: You know, we can't act like a five-year-old.
• 33:05
  Owen Strachan: We've got to act like a young man, because, even though you're only 12, you are a young man, and then there are ways we can take that out and concretize that, formalize that with our sons, and that is good.
• 33:15
  Owen Strachan: So much of what we have to do, though, guys, is put an arm around our boys, and I think even prior generations, they almost.
• 33:23
  Owen Strachan: They thought it was the right thing.
• 33:25
  Owen Strachan: I think they were trying, but they thought it was the right thing to have an arm away from their son pushing the son almost away into the wild to become a boy, or even take a hand against him.
• 33:35
  Owen Strachan: And of course I'm not speaking of a spanking or something like that, but I am saying a lot of what we do to raise sons to be godly men by the grace of God is not arm against them, it's arm around them.
• 33:47
  Owen Strachan: That's good man.
• 33:48
  Owen Strachan: And yes, you do have to do a fair amount of correction, by the way, for boys, right?
• 33:52
  Owen Strachan: I mean, let's be honest, boys have 2,000% more testosterone on average.
• 33:55
  Owen Strachan: That creates real problems for mom when she's homeschooling all day.
• 33:58
  Owen Strachan: Let's not sugarcoat this.
• 33:59
  Owen Strachan: Boys can be a real handful.
• 34:01
  Owen Strachan: If boys are not shepherded and discipled and saved by the grace of God, they can cause major mayhem.
• 34:07
  Owen Strachan: But again, arm around the shoulder, baby.
• 34:10
  Emeal Zwayne: I love that, you know, and it's interesting because recently I was watching an older movie and this son had accomplished something great and the father reached out his hand and they shook hands and it was just a reminder, like you said, of that older generation.
• 34:24
  Emeal Zwayne: Right, yeah, it's so formal, but, you know, one of the things that delights me is to see the redemption that has been happening.
• 34:31
  Emeal Zwayne: You know, in our circles there are so many young men.
• 34:34
  Emeal Zwayne: If you ask for a raise of hands in a room where the overwhelming majority would raise their hand, when you ask how many of you are from divorced families, yes, but the trend is changing.
• 34:43
  Emeal Zwayne: You know, like I said, even within my own circles, I'm seeing these young men now being brought up by fathers that stayed at home.
• 34:49
  Emeal Zwayne: Yes, and we're there.
• 34:50
  Emeal Zwayne: So it's great to see that.
• 34:51
  Emeal Zwayne: So, give us the history, take us back.
• 34:54
  Emeal Zwayne: Well, where did this start?
• 34:55
  Owen Strachan: What are the roots?
• 34:55
  Owen Strachan: The roots are what we would call second and third wave feminism.
• 35:00
  Owen Strachan: So in the 1960s the idea really catches on in culture that young men and young women shouldn't be inhabiting different roles in the home or in the church.
• 35:10
  Owen Strachan: They should have the same roles.
• 35:11
  Owen Strachan: And that comes to fruition and flowering in the 80s and 90s, where you've got sort of power suit feminism in the public square.
• 35:19
  Owen Strachan: And now in today you've got fourth wave feminism so-called which really isn't fourth wave feminism at all.
• 35:25
  Owen Strachan: It's really gone queer Feminism has gone queer.
• 35:28
  Owen Strachan: But that influence, that movement has caused massive effects in culture and society for men, because men are now no longer looked to as the leader.
• 35:38
  Owen Strachan: There's no longer this cue, this understanding that men should step up and do the hard thing.
• 35:44
  Owen Strachan: There's now actually really the opposite wiring for a young man.
• 35:48
  Owen Strachan: When I'm around young men in my son's basketball team back in Arkansas this is not high-flown basketball, but it is.
• 35:56
  Owen Strachan: I'm an assistant coach.
• 35:58
  Owen Strachan: I've stepped into the coaching ranks because I want to connect with my son and I love him so much.
• 36:02
  Owen Strachan: He's a great young guy.
• 36:03
  Owen Strachan: So anyway, you have to train these boys.
• 36:06
  Owen Strachan: I've learned to catch and to rebound.
• 36:10
  Owen Strachan: Okay, I don't mean become this amazing rebounder.
• 36:13
  Owen Strachan: I mean, they don't have the instinct to even really go get the ball and it has been so instructive for me in showing me that again, as I've said, boys have had the assertiveness and the aggressiveness extracted from the fundamentals, which should be common sensical, have been removed from the boys today.
• 36:33
  Owen Strachan: Yes.
• 36:35
  Mark Spence: I remember we had a missionary inside of Uganda who was overheard saying if a spear is being thrown at you, if you flex, the spear will bounce off of you.
• 36:46
  Mark Spence: And we think well, it's common sense that that is not accurate.
• 36:50
  Mark Spence: That is not true.
• 36:51
  Mark Spence: Yes, but common sense is actually a learned trait.
• 36:53
  Mark Spence: So when we begin to think through what is the next generation of boys being taught, yeah, we need to make sure we're doing our job at home with these fundamentals, which were once considered so common sense and are really not.
• 37:08
  Owen Strachan: The bad news is that our culture has basically abandoned boys.
• 37:12
  Owen Strachan: It is abandoned young men.
• 37:14
  Owen Strachan: I'm talking about secular culture.
• 37:16
  Owen Strachan: It's a wild world out there.
• 37:18
  Owen Strachan: Here's the good news, sorry, here's the good news.
• 37:21
  Owen Strachan: In the church we have a tremendous opportunity to make disciples, and that's what Peterson shows us.
• 37:26
  Owen Strachan: Peterson was nothing other than a father in public in the last decade.
• 37:31
  Owen Strachan: Roughly rounding up a little bit, he didn't get it all right.
• 37:34
  Owen Strachan: I don't agree with him on all things, but he said to transgender pronouns in Canada no, that's what your dad says.
• 37:40
  Owen Strachan: To things that you shouldn't do, no, yeah.
• 37:42
  Owen Strachan: And then he stood up and he called people to responsibility and maturity and self-control, from his own worldview not a Christian worldview, but Christian influence to some level.
• 37:50
  Owen Strachan: And people responded like crazy to that.
• 37:53
  Owen Strachan: And so here's the deal we as Christians.
• 37:55
  Owen Strachan: Yes, the world is on fire, but we have an amazing opportunity.
• 37:59
  Owen Strachan: Because of how bad the world is, the world isn't even trying to form men, so we've lost competitors in the market and we've almost got the market to ourselves.
• 38:08
  Mark Spence: You know what's interesting?
• 38:09
  Mark Spence: I was watching a video yesterday of Jordan Peterson and he was in tears.
• 38:12
  Mark Spence: He was crying down.
• 38:13
  Mark Spence: Maybe you've seen the video where he was talking about we need to scare the hell out of our boys, and he went on to explain what he meant by that, and it was not anything Christ-centric in the midst of it, but he was talking about heading down the stream of the feminism in which we're heading.
• 38:31
  Ray Comfort: Yes.
• 38:31
  Mark Spence: And that scares him to death.
• 38:33
  Mark Spence: And he was so emotional with his Christ-less conservatism that he doesn't know where to go.
• 38:39
  Mark Spence: He doesn't know what to do with that.
• 38:41
  Mark Spence: And then we have guys inside the church that don't know how to handle that, because this is not even being taught anymore.
• 38:45
  Mark Spence: It's just being swept underneath the rug.
• 38:46
  Mark Spence: That's right.
• 38:46
  Mark Spence: This is why I appreciate it.
• 38:47
  Mark Spence: I'm so excited to read your book.
• 38:49
  Emeal Zwayne: That comes out today.
• 38:51
  Emeal Zwayne: Today, the War on Men.
• 38:52
  Emeal Zwayne: So, real quick.
• 38:54
  Emeal Zwayne: What can the church do to counter this?
• 38:57
  Emeal Zwayne: Leaders within the church, those that have, by God's grace, influence over the people of God who are called to be salt and light in this world, yes, what can they do?
• 39:06
  Owen Strachan: Yeah, we have to reconceive of church and we've got to think of church not just as something we do on Sunday morning at 11 am or whatever time you go, but we've got to think of church as biblical worldview training center and discipleship center.
• 39:20
  Owen Strachan: And I'm saying very basic things.
• 39:22
  Owen Strachan: This is not genius theology talking, but too many churches are just preaching points where people go, show up, do their thing, shake a few hands, eat a donut and leave.
• 39:30
  Owen Strachan: And we've got to recognize whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
• 39:33
  Owen Strachan: The culture has basically disintegrated In terms of this issue of manhood.
• 39:36
  Owen Strachan: It's abandoned boys and not just abandoned them, it's targeting them.
• 39:41
  Owen Strachan: So we have to do the hard work of forming boys to be men.
• 39:46
  Owen Strachan: We've got to have actual teaching on that.
• 39:49
  Owen Strachan: We've got to have programs or youth groups or whatever that have a real eye to that.
• 39:53
  Owen Strachan: We've got to raise up men in the church to be disciples of the boys and young men who come in, who don't have a father.
• 39:59
  Owen Strachan: We don't just want those boys and young men from the community who come in to sort of sit there and then leave.
• 40:04
  Owen Strachan: We want the older men to see themselves as having something really valuable to teach these young men, all anchored in the gospel of divine grace.
• 40:12
  Owen Strachan: So, in sum, we've got to be a kind of field hospital.
• 40:16
  Owen Strachan: Okay, yeah, it's a war zone out there.
• 40:18
  Owen Strachan: Don't think of our culture as just vaguely not really on cue with manhood.
• 40:23
  Owen Strachan: No, it's actively working against boys and men, and that's not just a generic issue.
• 40:28
  Owen Strachan: Actual flesh and blood.
• 40:30
  Owen Strachan: Boys and young men are being profoundly harmed by this.
• 40:32
  Owen Strachan: So we set up a field hospital in the middle of it.
• 40:36
  Oscar Navarro: Two things.
• 40:36
  Oscar Navarro: One I have a great rebounding drill for you.
• 40:38
  Oscar Navarro: We'll talk later Because we had the same thing, but we fixed that problem, okay.
• 40:43
  Oscar Navarro: Second thing is I love what you're saying.
• 40:46
  Oscar Navarro: I think you're absolutely right.
• 40:47
  Oscar Navarro: I'm thinking one historically, the movement from being a boy to being a man, like when you were a little boy, you were your mother's son and at some point during puberty traditionally in all traditions have this in Christianity and Judaism and beyond what would end up happening in puberty is that you would go from being your mother's son to your father's son and you would begin to go to work with your father and you would begin to take on tasks alongside.
• 41:17
  Oscar Navarro: You would become an apprentice of your father.
• 41:20
  Oscar Navarro: And in this day and age we lose that yes, right, because the dad is the doofus.
• 41:24
  Oscar Navarro: The dad is either the workaholic, the doofus, the exhausted one, the one that's too busy, and so then these boys go to the internet for a substitute.
• 41:34
  Owen Strachan: So here's what that is so good.
• 41:36
  Owen Strachan: Here's what I've been doing.
• 41:37
  Owen Strachan: I don't have this, you know, bootstrapping exciting, rough neck existence.
• 41:42
  Owen Strachan: Vocationally, my dad walked the woods of Maine for a living.
• 41:45
  Owen Strachan: That was his job.
• 41:46
  Mark Spence: That's a pretty cool job.
• 41:47
  Mark Spence: That's a job.
• 41:47
  Mark Spence: That was a job.
• 41:48
  Mark Spence: Walk the woods.
• 41:50
  Mark Spence: I'm going to pay you to walk the woods.
• 41:52
  Owen Strachan: Yeah, I mean, it's a forester, that's just a cool vocation, but I don't have that.
• 41:55
  Owen Strachan: I go and I mostly type on a computer you know what I mean or talk to people, but really manly like very manly.
• 42:00
  Oscar Navarro: It's a very manly type.
• 42:01
  Owen Strachan: I will say but what I want to do is I still want to integrate him as much as I can into my vocation.
• 42:07
  Owen Strachan: I want to train him that he's a worker.
• 42:09
  Owen Strachan: I tell him today you know you got homeschooled, you know you got homeschooled to do.
• 42:13
  Owen Strachan: And then I need 30 minutes of weeding.
• 42:14
  Owen Strachan: So we're in suburbia okay, we're not in the, you know, the vast Canadian winterlands or something like this, where he can roam like a young bear.
• 42:23
  Owen Strachan: But I can train him.
• 42:24
  Owen Strachan: I still can train him, and this is the kind of things we have to do as fathers.
• 42:28
  Owen Strachan: We've got to get off our devices today.
• 42:31
  Owen Strachan: We've got to ignore the distractions.
• 42:33
  Owen Strachan: We've got to get in the word ourselves and be spiritually focused.
• 42:36
  Owen Strachan: And then we've got to be intentional fathers.
• 42:38
  Owen Strachan: We've got to see our son as one who probably needs even more coaching than we know.
• 42:44
  Oscar Navarro: And I think I think that's that's super helpful, because as we talk about the culture we can, I can see a mom, a dad, feeling so overwhelmed Like what can we do about this grand narrative?
• 42:54
  Oscar Navarro: There's nothing we can do, but listen.
• 42:56
  Oscar Navarro: God has always moved in two places in the home and in the church, and that's what we can do.
• 43:04
  Oscar Navarro: We talk about discipling our boys, and I love that you went to the church as well.
• 43:08
  Oscar Navarro: And let me give a shout out to some of the guys at our church, like, because the thing is is that we're not just fathers when we're in the church, we're not just men to our own sons, we're men to all the boys that go to our church and and and so, like I can think of one guy at my church like I don't hunt, or I've started to hunt because of him, he hunts.
• 43:24
  Oscar Navarro: And he was like Brian.
• 43:26
  Oscar Navarro: He was like, hey, oscar, I'd love to take Levi hunting with me.
• 43:29
  Oscar Navarro: Like he, as you put it, wrapped his arm around my son.
• 43:32
  Oscar Navarro: This is a retired police officer.
• 43:35
  Oscar Navarro: That's like, let me be an officer, let me be an uncle.
• 43:36
  Oscar Navarro: And then I think of one other story is a good friends of mine, danny and Matt.
• 43:40
  Oscar Navarro: There's a young.
• 43:42
  Oscar Navarro: There's a woman who's now a single mom at our church and her son is a rambunctious little guy and he's a struggle.
• 43:50
  Oscar Navarro: But here I am, I'm sitting around a fire pit and these two guys are like hey, men, it's time we step it up, because he doesn't have a father and so we have to be that figure for him in the church.
• 44:01
  Oscar Navarro: We have to step in.
• 44:02
  Oscar Navarro: And I love that.
• 44:03
  Oscar Navarro: I love the idea of men in a local church not showing up to talk to their boys about fantasy football, but showing up and looking down and seeing the little boys and they're just going.
• 44:13
  Oscar Navarro: How can I be an uncle?
• 44:15
  Owen Strachan: And here's what that depends on.
• 44:16
  Owen Strachan: Sorry, cutting in, I know we're almost out.
• 44:18
  Owen Strachan: It depends on paying attention to the okay and so many boys today, like if I'm at the local basketball gym, not Christian events just shooting around with my son.
• 44:29
  Owen Strachan: If you guys, this whole, how do we fight the war on men?
• 44:33
  Owen Strachan: Oh no, what's our massive program?
• 44:35
  Owen Strachan: Honestly, just pay attention to boys, just be kind to boys, get down on one knee, yeah.
• 44:41
  Owen Strachan: Just say hey, nice shot.
• 44:42
  Ray Comfort: That's a good shot, bro.
• 44:44
  Owen Strachan: How long you've been playing here and engaged them, and that's what you guys, by the way.
• 44:47
  Owen Strachan: Honestly, this isn't puffing smoke.
• 44:49
  Owen Strachan: You guys do wonderfully.
• 44:49
  Owen Strachan: You engage people with the love and truth of God, and that is what we need.
• 44:55
  Owen Strachan: We need Christians who pay attention to anyone but to our boys to boys.
• 45:03
  Mark Spence: He did something that very great, that was so intentional with his kids his boys specifically was that he reached out to a bunch of professionals inside their job and he went up to them and said hey, would you mind taking my boy with you to work?
• 45:16
  Mark Spence: So you're a police officer, can you?
• 45:19
  Ray Comfort: have a ride along.
• 45:19
  Mark Spence: You're a firefighter, Can you go there?
• 45:21
  Mark Spence: What are you?
• 45:22
  Mark Spence: And I think both of your boys did this both Luke and Danny and they were able to see the workforce and I haven't heard of anybody doing that.
• 45:30
  Emeal Zwayne: Yeah, and then each of them we had crafted 15 questions that they sat down afterward with the man that they went out with and asked them these questions, and then they journaled it all and they have it.
• 45:40
  Emeal Zwayne: Wow, and one of my sons, he picked the career path.
• 45:43
  Emeal Zwayne: He went with one of our friends who's an owner, our friend Thomas Pratel.
• 45:46
  Emeal Zwayne: He's an owner operator of a couple Chick-fil-A's.
• 45:48
  Emeal Zwayne: That's his trajectory.
• 45:49
  Emeal Zwayne: He's a manager for him now.
• 45:51
  Emeal Zwayne: Oh, wow.
• 45:52
  Emeal Zwayne: He's a business major.
• 45:54
  Oscar Navarro: I was super honored.
• 45:54
  Oscar Navarro: I was one of the men that got to take one of his boys out and I was like I'm meeting with him, I'm super honored that your dad would choose me and he was like well, he said you were the what not to do, Exactly.
• 46:03
  Mark Spence: Here's my final question I know we're so rolling out of time and that is are there a couple of books out there on manhood that you go?
• 46:10
  Mark Spence: You know what, get my book but also get this book, or listen to this guy or go to that website.
• 46:15
  Mark Spence: What is out there besides your book that's coming out today?
• 46:19
  Owen Strachan: Yeah, future Men is a solid book in some ways by Doug Wilson.
• 46:24
  Owen Strachan: Manly Dominion by Mark Chansky is not a well-known book, but it's got some good ideas.
• 46:31
  Owen Strachan: It's good to be a man by Michael Foster, and non-tenant has some good stuff.
• 46:35
  Owen Strachan: The art of manliness website that we're all aware of has stepped into the gap.
• 46:40
  Owen Strachan: I'm part of a project now I've not said this publicly, not that anybody cares, but I'm part of a project called make ready, make ready.
• 46:47
  Owen Strachan: We're on Instagram it's the make ready and what we're doing is we're trying to fill those, some of those gaps that the art of manliness, for example, did.
• 46:55
  Owen Strachan: The guy there's a Mormon, but he's like teaching boys how to tie a tie young man, I had a shave right and you can, and a lot of people look at ventures like that or even conversations like we just had.
• 47:05
  Owen Strachan: They go oh this is stupid.
• 47:07
  Owen Strachan: Well, you go, look at you macho guys trying to be all manly and they mock us.
• 47:10
  Owen Strachan: But in truth that's why young men are going to the internet to find Basic advice how to talk to a girl.
• 47:19
  Owen Strachan: The vacuum, it's this profound vacuum.
• 47:21
  Owen Strachan: So I pray make ready can be a little part of filling that gap.
• 47:24
  Owen Strachan: But beyond that project We've just got a we've got to start talking about practical manhood as well.
• 47:30
  Owen Strachan: We've mostly about, or a fair bit about, theoretical.
• 47:33
  Owen Strachan: We've gotten practical too.
• 47:34
  Owen Strachan: But this conversation isn't usually the conversation we have in Christian circles.
• 47:38
  Owen Strachan: We usually talk about, okay, this Bible verse, this Bible verse conversation done.
• 47:41
  Owen Strachan: You've got to help boys know how to talk to a girl.
• 47:43
  Owen Strachan: Yeah, like seriously, you've got to help your boys know how to how to dress in different situations.
• 47:48
  Owen Strachan: You've got to help boys know how to fail.
• 47:50
  Owen Strachan: How do you?
• 47:50
  Ray Comfort: react when you fail.
• 47:51
  Ray Comfort: Let's get out.
• 47:52
  Owen Strachan: Of these are the kind of things We've got to step up.
• 47:54
  Emeal Zwayne: I love it, you know, and again, it's it's with the end in mind, preparing them from the start, and with our boys as well.
• 47:59
  Emeal Zwayne: We did write a passage, as we did it with our girls, and that they they have a gathered around them, that the men or women of God, depending on their gender, who love, influence them, impacted them, and then they initiate them into that manhood.
• 48:11
  Emeal Zwayne: And, wow, we found it to be really powerful.
• 48:13
  Emeal Zwayne: Huh, with our kids.
• 48:14
  Emeal Zwayne: But, friends, the war on men, the war on men, the war on men.
• 48:17
  Emeal Zwayne: You got to get it.
• 48:18
  Emeal Zwayne: If you're listening to this podcast on any Platform, that means the book is available, it's out because it's being released today, and so get it.
• 48:25
  Emeal Zwayne: And then, oh, and real quick, how can people connect with your ministry and find out more about you online?
• 48:30
  Owen Strachan: That's a very media all that.
• 48:31
  Owen Strachan: Thank you guys for this generous time.
• 48:33
  Owen Strachan: By the way, absolutely.
• 48:34
  Owen Strachan: I'm on Twitter at, or I guess it's X now at Ostrachan and I'm on Instagram at prof Str a chan.
• 48:42
  Owen Strachan: So those are two places you can go and All right, and make ready.
• 48:46
  Emeal Zwayne: You can check out, make ready, yeah so remember war on men, get it friends and no one.
• 48:50
  Emeal Zwayne: Honestly, brother, it's never enough time with you, so we're gonna have to do this again and again, and again.
• 48:56
  Emeal Zwayne: I hope so.
• 48:56
  Emeal Zwayne: We love it.
• 48:57
  Emeal Zwayne: I love you guys.
• 48:57
  Emeal Zwayne: All right, brother, love you All right, god bless you.
• 48:59
  Emeal Zwayne: Boom, that's what you call fire.
• 49:02
  Mark Spence: Wasn't that a great interview, guys, with Owen I like that brother, I like him a lot and I just want to say that what he is doing is Unparalleled, really, because he's on the front lines and he is trying to equip and inspire people to Be men, I mean, be a bit biblical man, yeah, and he's giving an example of that through his life and through his.
• 49:27
  Mark Spence: But he you know, he was sitting in front of me as I was listening to Ken Ham, his, his message and his kids are Unbelievably adorable.
• 49:36
  Mark Spence: Yeah, my wife and I were just looking going.
• 49:37
  Mark Spence: Oh, I just want to squeeze their cheeks.
• 49:39
  Emeal Zwayne: Yeah, his son legal in the football dose in the lobby and tricking us, and yes, all kinds of things.
• 49:44
  Ray Comfort: You want any more kids now.
• 49:46
  Emeal Zwayne: Give me more and spy it.
• 49:48
  Mark Spence: I just want it.
• 49:49
  Mark Spence: I want to adopt all of them, but I can't yeah, alright, friends.
• 49:53
  Emeal Zwayne: Well, there you have it.
• 49:54
  Emeal Zwayne: Make sure to get it now, today.
• 49:56
  Emeal Zwayne: The war on men.
• 49:57
  Emeal Zwayne: It will not disappoint.
• 49:59
  Emeal Zwayne: Owen never does.
• 50:00
  Emeal Zwayne: Get it.
• 50:01
  Emeal Zwayne: Don't forget the track sample pack.
• 50:02
  Emeal Zwayne: Living waters, mug, the evidence study Bible.
• 50:03
  Emeal Zwayne: All living waters, calm.
• 50:04
  Emeal Zwayne: Thank you for joining us, friends.
• 50:06
  Emeal Zwayne: We'll see you here next time on the Living Waters podcast.
• 50:11
  Emeal Zwayne: The ultimate cure for insomnia.
• 50:17
  Mark Spence: We have to have that last, but yes, we can skip it if you want.
• 50:20
  Mark Spence: No.