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Beyond Stereotypes: Redrawing the Path for Male Discipleship ⚓ · 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: again by doctor Rshiesch Farmer and we're continuing our conversation
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Speaker 1: about Biblical manhood and today we're going to be talking
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Speaker 1: about redrawing the map. So last time we talked a
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Speaker 1: little bit about why the maps are failing, and the
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Speaker 1: maps are failing in part because they are inscribing really
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Speaker 1: a representation of reality that's rooted more in cultural ideas,
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Speaker 1: the reigning ideas in the moment, as opposed to mapping
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Speaker 1: out what it really means biblically to be a male
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Speaker 1: disciple of Jesus Christ. And so that's my fundamental thesis
1:08
Speaker 1: that's sort of where we've been pursuing, and now in
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Speaker 1: this episode, we're going to talk a little bit about
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Speaker 1: redrawing that map and what that looks like, and so
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Speaker 1: to do that, one of the places we're going to
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Speaker 1: look today is Matthew six. Matthew six is a passage
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Speaker 1: that I've reflected on a couple other places at different times.
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Speaker 1: But part of the reason I really like it is
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Speaker 1: because Jesus is explicitly teaching his disciples something here he's
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Speaker 1: walking around with him. What sort of the scene you
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Speaker 1: sort of get is he's teaching them and he's looking
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Speaker 1: out and he's seeing these different practices that are being
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Speaker 1: done by the hypocrites and then the gentiles, and so
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Speaker 1: with regard to the hypocrites, he sees them giving praying
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Speaker 1: and fasting inappropriately, and he doesn't reject the practice. It's
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Speaker 1: not like he tells the disciples, okay, prayers out because
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Speaker 1: they've screwed it up for you. You can no longer pray anymore.
2:00
Speaker 1: What he says is, look at how they're doing it,
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Speaker 1: and do it differently. And then he looks at prayer,
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Speaker 1: look at how they're doing it, and do it differently.
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Speaker 1: In each case, especially with the hypocrites. What he's trying
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Speaker 1: to get the disciples to understand is that these hypocrites
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Speaker 1: are using the practices of prayer, giving and fasting, or
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Speaker 1: actually in the passage giving prayer and fasting. So they're
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Speaker 1: using these in order to gain standing within the community.
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Speaker 1: So the practices are ordered to the powers that be
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Speaker 1: in the world. And what Jesus is telling his disciples is, look,
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Speaker 1: don't use these practices in that way. The way you
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Speaker 1: want to use them is to order them toward the
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Speaker 1: power that is God, and let God reward you. Use
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Speaker 1: these practices as a way to honor Him, as a
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Speaker 1: way to live out life in the kingdom. Don't use
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Speaker 1: them in order to gain standing in the world. Now,
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Speaker 1: how does that relate to the masculinity conversation we've been having.
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Speaker 1: I would argue that many times what we're looking at
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Speaker 1: when we look at the literature on biblical manhood, we're
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Speaker 1: actually looking at something more like what the hypocrites are
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Speaker 1: doing than what the disciples are told to do. That
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Speaker 1: these teachings are more in line with what it looks
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Speaker 1: like to be a culturally appropriate man and to be
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Speaker 1: seen as manly within the culture and to accrue whatever
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Speaker 1: benefit that might have as opposed to looking at this
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Speaker 1: and saying, what does it look like to be a
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Speaker 1: male disciple of Christ and to use our bodies, our
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Speaker 1: maleness for whatever language that might be in order to
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Speaker 1: serve and build the Kingdom of God. So that's sort
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Speaker 1: of the quick introduction to this, and we can dive
3:47
Speaker 1: into a deeper or go a little different way Ashish,
3:49
Speaker 1: but yeah.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I think an initial point to make I
3:55
Speaker 2: appreciate that introduction to what's going on what we think
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Speaker 2: of as the Sermon on the Mount. An initial point
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Speaker 2: to make in this is even the way that you
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Speaker 2: described it is instructive in so far as what we're
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Speaker 2: not trying to do. It could be very easy to
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Speaker 2: hear us and say we're saying down with any cultural articulation. Yeah,
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Speaker 2: that's actually the opposite of what we're trying to say.
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Speaker 2: We're trying to say, inevitably, we're making a cultural articulation,
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Speaker 2: a cultural interpretation. And the trouble is when we lose
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Speaker 2: sight of that. Well, as we look at the Pharisees
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Speaker 2: here and we look at the way that Jesus is
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Speaker 2: responding to them in Matthew six, and we compare that
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Speaker 2: to what he's trying to say to these other people.
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Speaker 2: It's it's worth noting that there's a cultural scenario at
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Speaker 2: play here. The people Jesus are talking to are the
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Speaker 2: ones that are the ones that the Pharisees have said,
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Speaker 2: you're not living into Toron, you're not living into the right,
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Speaker 2: the right way of the Law of Moses. And at
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Speaker 2: the same time they've elevated themselves. Right, we are the
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Speaker 2: ones look at us fall. It's a map, right, for
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Speaker 2: better or for worse. They've got a map, and they're
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Speaker 2: trying to tell these people, let's say, let's have the
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Speaker 2: most optimistic and charitable interpretation. The Pharisees are trying to
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Speaker 2: tell these people, stop doing what you're doing, do this instead. Yes,
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Speaker 2: and on that basic level, that's not the problem. But
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Speaker 2: what Jesus is doing when he comes to them is
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Speaker 2: he's saying, you know, the overwhelming theme that comes through
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Speaker 2: in most of these sections of the Sermon on the Mountains,
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Speaker 2: you hypocrites, and you hypocrites are each time they're religious leaders, right,
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Speaker 2: And that's instructive to us because he's now speaking into
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Speaker 2: that same cultural setting to say that you've established a
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Speaker 2: map that elevates yourself at the expense of others and
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Speaker 2: deflates others to the elevation of yourself, right, right, So
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Speaker 2: the so the way to look at this passage, For instance,
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Speaker 2: at the beginning of chapter six, verse five, when Jesus says,
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Speaker 2: and when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites,
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Speaker 2: for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues
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Speaker 2: and at the street corners, that they may may be
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Speaker 2: seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have
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Speaker 2: received their reward. But when you pray, go into your
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Speaker 2: room and shut the door, and pray to your father,
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Speaker 2: who's in secret, and your father's sees in secret, will
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Speaker 2: reward you. It can be very easily to principalize that
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Speaker 2: and say, and I've heard this done plenty with this
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Speaker 2: particular passage, and to say, therefore, what God is telling
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Speaker 2: us is that all of our prayers should be done
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Speaker 2: in the privacy of our own room, by ourselves, or
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Speaker 2: perhaps hiding in a closet. No public prayer. That's a
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Speaker 2: really odd thing. Then when you put that alongside what
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Speaker 2: Jesus's upper room discourses. Right, in many ways, it is
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Speaker 2: a gigantic prayer in front of others, or the way
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Speaker 2: that Paul is speaking to the churches, where he from
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Speaker 2: time to time even says pray with and for one another. Right,
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Speaker 2: he's he's he's inviting that corporate. So the idea here
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Speaker 2: is not to read this in an overly wooden way,
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Speaker 2: but to understand that when you have this dynamic, this
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Speaker 2: this harsh critique, you hypocrites, that what Jesus is trying
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Speaker 2: to do here is that these people who've been who've
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Speaker 2: been barred, who've been marginalized from being able to be
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Speaker 2: the ones who are praying with and in front of
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Speaker 2: the congregation. He's saying to these hypocrites, these religious leaders,
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Speaker 2: maybe instead of critiquing them, be more like them. He's
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Speaker 2: flipping the switch right here, or flipping the script. Yeah,
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Speaker 2: I think he's I think you see the same thing
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Speaker 2: coming up later on in the sermon in the Mount
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Speaker 2: Chapter seven. This really interesting passage. I've heard it preached
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Speaker 2: a lot. You probably have aswell. James, uh enter by
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Speaker 2: the narrow gate, for the gate is wide and the
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Speaker 2: way is easy. That leads to destruction, and those who
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Speaker 2: enter enter by it are many. Now what's interesting about
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Speaker 2: that chapter seven, verse thirteen is that you've got this
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Speaker 2: this gate that is narrow, and you've got this gate
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Speaker 2: that is wide. And then you've got this road that
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Speaker 2: is wide, and you've got this road that is narrow.
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Speaker 2: But when you get to verse fourteen, we move from
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Speaker 2: nouns and adjectives to suddenly what Grammarians would call a
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Speaker 2: passive participle. So the idea here is most translations it
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Speaker 2: says something for the gate is narrow. What it actually
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Speaker 2: says in this passive voice is the gate has been
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Speaker 2: made narrow, which I think is significant. It shows sort
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Speaker 2: of the ways in which we've made these maps. We've
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Speaker 2: received these interpretations, we've made a map out of them,
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Speaker 2: and we've tended to treat this passage as a you know,
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Speaker 2: very few people are going to follow Jesus and make it.
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Speaker 2: And even those who say they're following Jesus, we're going
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Speaker 2: to critique them to know end, just make sure right,
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Speaker 2: and the Biblical managed conversation has been built into that.
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Speaker 2: It's been a map to say, be the right kind
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Speaker 2: of man, because if you're the wrong kind of man,
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Speaker 2: implicitly you're on that narrow path. But actually this is
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Speaker 2: a message about the Pharisees, the religious leaders. What they've done,
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Speaker 2: They've made something narrow which didn't otherwise need to be narrow. Right,
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Speaker 2: there's no reason to say that the gate that you
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Speaker 2: should follow, the gate of life, could also be wide.
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Speaker 2: It's sort of the idea there, which I find really instructive. Again,
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Speaker 2: it's it's a cultural interpretation. You can't but have a
9:39
Speaker 2: cultural interpretation. And the question for our patterns, as we've
9:42
Speaker 2: decided we're going to call them, is what does that
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Speaker 2: look like now when we're talking about our environment, what
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Speaker 2: does it look like when we're talking about man. The
9:50
Speaker 2: goal here is not to say we've created a cultural
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Speaker 2: man or men, or we're trying to say, you know what,
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Speaker 2: we've prioritized the ancient Near East men. What you need
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Speaker 2: to do do is you need to figure out what
10:02
Speaker 2: these hebrew Men wore at the turn of the of
10:06
Speaker 2: the clocks from BC to a D whatever you call that,
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Speaker 2: and that's what you gotta wear, and that's what you
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Speaker 2: got to you gotta eat what they ate like. No,
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Speaker 2: it's understanding the pattern of the flipping of this switch.
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Speaker 2: This this very very intentional and harmful narrowing of a
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Speaker 2: scope which Jesus is bursting open here to say, you
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Speaker 2: know what, you marginalize people. You very much have the
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Speaker 2: ability to live in the way of life, and the
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Speaker 2: answer is not to do it in the way that
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Speaker 2: these religious leaders have told you. Well, the same sort
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Speaker 2: of thing can be done here right where we can
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Speaker 2: say this sort of very narrow scope of discussion of
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Speaker 2: biblical manhood can be opened up, and rather than saying
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Speaker 2: we reject manhood, we can say there's there's a variety
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Speaker 2: of ways to be a man that can be still,
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Speaker 2: paths that honor what it is God has made us
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Speaker 2: to be.
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Speaker 1: James, Yeah, I mean, I think when we're looking at
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Speaker 1: these texts Matthew six and seven, and I think that
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Speaker 1: observation you made on Passage or on Matthew seven is
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Speaker 1: really interesting. But I mean, if we go back and
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Speaker 1: look at the Lord's prayer, right, this is it grows
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Speaker 1: out of this point that Jesus makes, like look at
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Speaker 1: how the Pharisees are praying, look at how the gentiles
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Speaker 1: are praying, and then the disciples, depending on which gospel
11:35
Speaker 1: you're in, and Luke, they actually asked Jesus to teach
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Speaker 1: them to pray. Here he kind of volunteers it. Right,
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Speaker 1: Do not be like them. Why, for your father knows
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Speaker 1: what you need before you ask him. So instead of
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Speaker 1: throwing up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, which you
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Speaker 1: get this impression that the Gentiles, just because they don't
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Speaker 1: know who God is, they don't really under stand ward
12:00
Speaker 1: they're serving. They're sort of doing the let's throw the
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Speaker 1: spaghetti at the fridge and see what sticks sort of
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Speaker 1: method of prayer here. And so you've got to throw
12:08
Speaker 1: a lot of spaghetti against that fridge, right, because you
12:10
Speaker 1: want some of it to stick, right, And Jesus is saying,
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Speaker 1: you don't need to do that because you know who
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Speaker 1: your father is. But this mode of praying, I'm sorry,
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Speaker 1: your father knows you, right, That's why you don't have
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Speaker 1: to do this, because your father knows you. And so
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Speaker 1: I think that this mode of praying is instructive for
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Speaker 1: how we go about thinking about anything in our lives,
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Speaker 1: especially when we think about manhood. Our father knows who
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Speaker 1: we are, and so we have to enact the practice
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Speaker 1: of being male in a different way. And so you know,
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Speaker 1: as we look at this, this prayer that Jesus is
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Speaker 1: teaching them is like what for versus long it's almost nothing, right,
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Speaker 1: but it conveys so much about what it is to
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Speaker 1: be a follower of Christ. One of my favorite portions
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Speaker 1: of it. I mean, it's all really good, and I
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Speaker 1: do it real quick. But you know how it will
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Speaker 1: be your name, Your name is holy, your kingdom Come.
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Speaker 1: Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
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Speaker 1: There we have this dependence and desire for God's will
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Speaker 1: to be done. There's a subtle subjection of ourselves to
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Speaker 1: God's will, not our will. We want God's will to
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Speaker 1: be done. Verse eleven, give us this day our daily bread. Look,
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Speaker 1: don't give us more than we can use. Right, give
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Speaker 1: us what we need in every moment. We're not praying
13:40
Speaker 1: for prosperity. We're praying for sustenance. And there's a check
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Speaker 1: on our desires in that phrasing. And then you have
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Speaker 1: and forgive us our debts, as we have also forgiven
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Speaker 1: our debtors. Now that's going to come up again in
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Speaker 1: verse fourteen and fifteen, so I'll kind of leave it
13:56
Speaker 1: aside for the moment. And then in thirteen it lead
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Speaker 1: us not to tenation, but deliver us from evil or
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Speaker 1: from the evil one, depending on your translation. And so
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Speaker 1: this last stanza is, look, keep us from moving in
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Speaker 1: the wrong direction, keep us from having our desires misdirected.
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Speaker 1: When we get to the forgiveness and the forgiving of debts,
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Speaker 1: that's where we really see that if we know the
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Speaker 1: Father's forgiveness, we must also forgive others to the same status,
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Speaker 1: and so we're not holding grudges, we are actually forgiving.
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Speaker 1: And that gets into complex issues. But I would just
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Speaker 1: say there's a reflection of God that we are supposed
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Speaker 1: to have in the forgiveness of debts and the forgiveness
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Speaker 1: of debtors. That is reflective of who God is and
14:39
Speaker 1: what God has done for us. And so even in
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Speaker 1: this little prayer, what we see is these are not
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Speaker 1: things that yes there's a cultural aspect to them, but
14:50
Speaker 1: ultimately what we're trying to get away from is doing
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Speaker 1: the things exactly like the culture would want us to
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Speaker 1: do them. There's a formative aspect of this prayer that
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Speaker 1: Jesus is trying to get his disciples to understand. You
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Speaker 1: don't act like this in the culture. You act like that.
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Speaker 1: You move away from this sort of formation, this sort
15:10
Speaker 1: of system, this sort of economics, this sort of whatever right,
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Speaker 1: this sort of relationship with your peers, and your neighbors.
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Speaker 1: You move away from all that and you move toward this.
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Speaker 1: And the prayer is intended, I think, to sort of
15:23
Speaker 1: help shape the disciples and remind them that even in
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Speaker 1: the marginal situation that they're in, this sort of prayer
15:31
Speaker 1: reminds them that they don't need much more than what
15:34
Speaker 1: they have, that God is with them, and that these
15:38
Speaker 1: practices of calling for God's will to be done, asking
15:43
Speaker 1: for daily bread, forgiving of debts, and staying away from
15:47
Speaker 1: evil are the crucial aspects that they need to be
15:50
Speaker 1: thinking about as they move and breathe in a culture
15:52
Speaker 1: that is hostile to them. And so there's this real
15:57
Speaker 1: deep intermeshing of what Jesus is trying to teach the
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Speaker 1: people who are following him and the dangers that are
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Speaker 1: available in the culture around them. And I think part
16:08
Speaker 1: of what He's trying to do here in Matthew six
16:10
Speaker 1: has given them the resources to in my language, resist
16:14
Speaker 1: that resist this compromise that could come if they decide that, hey,
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Speaker 1: my life is kind of horrible, I'm tired of being
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Speaker 1: on the margins. What I'd really like is to be
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Speaker 1: a pharisee. And what Jesus is trying to say is
16:27
Speaker 1: don't do that, because that's not the goal, that's not
16:32
Speaker 1: where you need to go. And so for our discussion
16:35
Speaker 1: of masculinity manhood, I think we could say something very similar.
16:40
Speaker 1: I think there are times when and I've felt this myself.
16:45
Speaker 1: I'll give a little personal anecdote here real quick, but
16:47
Speaker 1: when I first started as a vice president a dean,
16:51
Speaker 1: I got a lot of stuff done, and I was
16:53
Speaker 1: sort of I was very aggressive, and I would do
16:57
Speaker 1: almost anything I needed to do to get done what
16:59
Speaker 1: I need to get done done. Then I got an
17:03
Speaker 1: executive coach who was like, you would not want to
17:06
Speaker 1: follow someone who leads like you do, and she was right,
17:13
Speaker 1: and so she started sort of shaving some of the
17:15
Speaker 1: rough edges off me. And what I realized was I
17:17
Speaker 1: was losing a lot more battles, but I was feeling
17:20
Speaker 1: way better about it, Like I felt more like myself
17:25
Speaker 1: losing than I did winning. And I think part of
17:30
Speaker 1: that was related to this idea that I just kept
17:33
Speaker 1: accommodating myself and compromising myself to win as opposed to
17:39
Speaker 1: being uncompromising in my integrity and refusing to win. And
17:46
Speaker 1: so this is sort of the lesson that I think
17:48
Speaker 1: is being taught or part of what's what we're seeing
17:51
Speaker 1: here in chapter six is that sort of an idea,
17:55
Speaker 1: is that the uncompromising faith that the disciples of Jesus
18:00
Speaker 1: exhibit in the face of cultural pressure to be something
18:04
Speaker 1: else is actually them winning.
18:11
Speaker 2: Yeah, thanks for that, James. You mentioned and meshing. Yeah,
18:18
Speaker 2: and you've got to know where I'm going with that, now.
18:25
Speaker 1: We'll see.
18:27
Speaker 2: I love it. I think in meshing is exactly one
18:30
Speaker 2: of the things, one of the patterns we're learning here. Yeah,
18:35
Speaker 2: so you walk through the Lord's Prayer and the thing
18:38
Speaker 2: that keeps coming up is it to the degree that
18:42
Speaker 2: we can take from this a lesson about what it
18:46
Speaker 2: means to be a human being, a theological understanding what
18:49
Speaker 2: it means to be human being or a biblical if
18:51
Speaker 2: you prefer that term, and within that to the degree
18:56
Speaker 2: that we can then say, therefore, that tells us something
18:58
Speaker 2: about for men how to.
18:59
Speaker 1: Be an.
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Speaker 2: H The idea of and meshing is what keeps coming
19:06
Speaker 2: up to me. But in the midst of that and meshing,
19:13
Speaker 2: the reality of n meshing is that it requires us
19:15
Speaker 2: to decenter ourselves. And I think the map that we
19:21
Speaker 2: tend to usually see for all sorts of issues, not
19:23
Speaker 2: just biblical manhood, but for our current purposes, especially Biblical
19:27
Speaker 2: manhood has a very centering of the self, or centering
19:32
Speaker 2: of a group effect, right, draws circle around this group
19:37
Speaker 2: of people, and this is what you ought to be like.
19:41
Speaker 2: But what we see here is a Jesus who who
19:44
Speaker 2: teaches us to pray in a way, and we're enmeshed
19:46
Speaker 2: with the Father, but we're decentering ourselves to the Father.
19:49
Speaker 2: Yeah right, we're praying to the Father. And how would
19:53
Speaker 2: be the name of the Father? And your kingdom come, Father,
19:56
Speaker 2: and your will be done, Father, which is in direct contrast.
19:59
Speaker 2: I mean again, it's important to read it within the
20:02
Speaker 2: narrative of this. Isn't Jesus talking to just anybody. He's
20:06
Speaker 2: talking to a group, as we've already said, have been
20:08
Speaker 2: marginalized by their own religious leaders. Yes, but even those
20:12
Speaker 2: religious leaders exist within the power scenario of being a
20:18
Speaker 2: colony of an empire, right, And one of the troubles
20:22
Speaker 2: that Jesus encountered with these religious leaders is that many
20:24
Speaker 2: of them seem to have wanted Jesus to overthrow that
20:28
Speaker 2: colonizing power because they had a very particular notion of
20:33
Speaker 2: the Davidic kinghood that looked, frankly more like Saul's notion
20:37
Speaker 2: of the of the kinghood. Right, and now what you've
20:42
Speaker 2: got here is a notion of kingdom that's a decentering
20:49
Speaker 2: of the self, even if subtly, And he continued on
20:52
Speaker 2: to you know so the enmeshing and the dissentering go
20:55
Speaker 2: hand in hand. Now you got this in meshing not
20:58
Speaker 2: just with God, but this ushing with the rest of creation.
21:01
Speaker 2: Give us the stay our daily bread. Right, daily bread
21:05
Speaker 2: isn't in a plastic bag, pre baked and pre sliced
21:09
Speaker 2: in a loaf in a supermarket on the shelf. This
21:14
Speaker 2: is the staple of life, yeah, right, And it is
21:20
Speaker 2: to your point, it's something that's it's it's a it's
21:24
Speaker 2: a momentary need, our daily bread. And it's something that's
21:28
Speaker 2: made in the present, devoid of supermarkets, devoid of mass production. Right, right,
21:34
Speaker 2: forgive us our debts, as we also forgiven our doubters.
21:37
Speaker 2: That as you point out, it goes on to say,
21:39
Speaker 2: forgive others their trustpass If you forgive others their trustpasses,
21:41
Speaker 2: your heavenly father will forgive you. As difficult as it
21:47
Speaker 2: is to read that passage, it's a reminder that none
21:50
Speaker 2: of us are in this position where we can think
21:53
Speaker 2: that we were faultless. We're blameless. Yeah, maybe a conversation
21:59
Speaker 2: for another time, But I think that's sort of one
22:01
Speaker 2: of the messages of Hosea that as you keep reading
22:04
Speaker 2: through it, you start to realize the only true Hoseiah
22:10
Speaker 2: is God. Right, even to the degree that we've been
22:13
Speaker 2: wronged in any number of ways, we recognize that we're
22:17
Speaker 2: not faultless the way Hooseah was so, Joseah really only
22:19
Speaker 2: stands in the place of God and that narrative, and
22:22
Speaker 2: this passage is reminding us of that as well. And
22:24
Speaker 2: then an old friend of mine from verse thirteen, I
22:27
Speaker 2: like the way that he put it lead us not
22:29
Speaker 2: to temptation. We can get there well enough on our own.
22:31
Speaker 2: I think enough set about that, right.
22:33
Speaker 1: That's right, that's right.
22:38
Speaker 2: The idea here is it's an enmeshing. It's a dependence
22:41
Speaker 2: upon God, it's a dependence upon the rest of creation,
22:43
Speaker 2: it's dependence upon fellow human beings. And to the degree
22:47
Speaker 2: that we can pull from this an idea of manhood,
22:50
Speaker 2: that's that notion of enmeshing and surrendering of the self
22:55
Speaker 2: centering is actually more the picture that we're getting here,
22:59
Speaker 2: which sits in direct contrast. Now, I think that's significant
23:03
Speaker 2: if I can be so bold as to bring in
23:05
Speaker 2: some philosopher's' names to name drop them. A pretty significant
23:11
Speaker 2: philosophical movement in the modern age is that one brought
23:14
Speaker 2: on by Hegel, and he talks about this constant battle.
23:18
Speaker 2: It's this master slave battle, and the master wants to
23:20
Speaker 2: keep the slave as the slave, and the slave wants
23:23
Speaker 2: to overcome and make the master submit and become the
23:27
Speaker 2: new master. And he has an interesting take on what
23:31
Speaker 2: we call resolved dialectic. That isn't terribly important to know
23:34
Speaker 2: here other than to say that there is that back
23:36
Speaker 2: and forth dynamic of a pushing against one another, and
23:40
Speaker 2: others have picked up on it and taken various directions. Right,
23:44
Speaker 2: Fuku in the twentieth century wanted to speak of this
23:48
Speaker 2: innate desire for power, and this innate desire for power
23:52
Speaker 2: is inherently a corrupting reality. And so it's sort of
23:55
Speaker 2: a building off of a Hagel in that key sense, right,
23:57
Speaker 2: that the slave might be the slave in the moment,
24:00
Speaker 2: but if the slave can flip the tables, the slave
24:02
Speaker 2: will and the slave will do the same thing. Yeah,
24:05
Speaker 2: And then you've got an interesting alternative that in Nietzsche,
24:08
Speaker 2: who says, you know, the one exception that seems to
24:11
Speaker 2: be to this is the message of Jesus, to which
24:13
Speaker 2: he says, Jesus is just the weakest of them all,
24:16
Speaker 2: because he's trying to make the slave be convinced that
24:18
Speaker 2: being a slave's a better thing.
24:20
Speaker 1: Yeah.
24:21
Speaker 2: Yeah, And as we read this, I think all we
24:25
Speaker 2: can say is that to the degree that all three
24:27
Speaker 2: of those people have done a decent job of explaining
24:31
Speaker 2: the forces that plan this work, Jesus, Jesus conforms manhood
24:37
Speaker 2: and personhood to none.
24:37
Speaker 1: Of those three, right, right.
24:41
Speaker 2: He's not advocating for be a slave to someone else.
24:44
Speaker 2: He's advocating for willingly decentering the self. He's advocating for
24:51
Speaker 2: seeing oneself received from the other, first and foremost from God,
24:57
Speaker 2: but also from the rest of creation, so by the way,
25:00
Speaker 2: from our fellow humanity. And this sort of servant motif
25:05
Speaker 2: is something that I think really transcends the New Testament
25:09
Speaker 2: and really the Old Testament as well, But it lies
25:13
Speaker 2: in the face of the kind of the politics of
25:18
Speaker 2: Lord over that I think shares more in common with
25:21
Speaker 2: the Pharisees here, right, it's the kind of map that
25:23
Speaker 2: the Pharisees were giving these marginalized Jewish people. Yeah, and
25:28
Speaker 2: Jesus seems to be doing something that doesn't just simply
25:31
Speaker 2: say you know, it's good be the marginalized you as people,
25:33
Speaker 2: but insteadies trying to say, here's a window to something better.
25:36
Speaker 2: That's none of the above.
25:38
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think to sort of draw this in
25:40
Speaker 1: because I want to make two points just to make
25:42
Speaker 1: them transparent. Number One, in choosing to address Matthew six
25:46
Speaker 1: and seven, we didn't choose a text that dealt with manhood. Right.
25:50
Speaker 1: There's no explicit reference of here's what it means to
25:53
Speaker 1: be a man. Part of that is because it's very
25:55
Speaker 1: difficult to find those passages. Right. You either find men
25:58
Speaker 1: in roles which will address fathers, husbands, sons, brothers, those
26:02
Speaker 1: kind of things, or you see pictures of men doing things,
26:08
Speaker 1: but it's very difficult to understand whether the men are
26:11
Speaker 1: doing these things because they're men, or whether they're being
26:13
Speaker 1: narrated doing these things to demonstrate faithfulness. Right. So we
26:17
Speaker 1: see in Hebrews eleven the Hall of Faith, we see
26:20
Speaker 1: men and women right alongside each other. And so the
26:23
Speaker 1: men aren't supposed to just look at the men. The
26:25
Speaker 1: women aren't just supposed to look at the women. We
26:27
Speaker 1: see males and females being paradigms for males and females today. Right,
26:33
Speaker 1: So in choosing this text, what I think part of
26:37
Speaker 1: what we're explicitly doing is we're saying, this is about
26:41
Speaker 1: being disciples of Jesus, Right, this is what this looks like.
26:46
Speaker 1: This is the dynamic, and we have to sort of
26:52
Speaker 1: pull that over into our maleness. We have to recognize
26:56
Speaker 1: the patterns that we're seeing here, and we have to
26:58
Speaker 1: say to ourselves, Okay, me individually, as a man, what
27:02
Speaker 1: does this look like for me to be a man
27:04
Speaker 1: and execute on these principles? I think one of the
27:07
Speaker 1: things we probably won't get to, but I mean, if
27:09
Speaker 1: we go to the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount,
27:11
Speaker 1: you know, if you think about the characteristics that Jesus
27:14
Speaker 1: talks about being blessed. Blessed are those who mourn? Blessed
27:17
Speaker 1: are the meek? Blessed are those who hunger and thirst?
27:20
Speaker 1: Blessed are the merciful? How many of those resonate with
27:24
Speaker 1: cultural notions of masculinity. Not very many? Right, This is
27:30
Speaker 1: not like, hey, who's your ideal man, Well, he's somebody
27:33
Speaker 1: who's meek, definitely, definitely needs to be meek, probably needs
27:36
Speaker 1: to be mourning, should should probably you know, be poor. Right, Like,
27:44
Speaker 1: these are not the things that come out. But to
27:47
Speaker 1: the point we've been making there, these are marginal people, right,
27:52
Speaker 1: and so Jesus is saying to these marginal people, look,
27:55
Speaker 1: you're the blessed ones, but none of them are told, Hey,
28:00
Speaker 1: in order to be blessed, you need to be rich
28:03
Speaker 1: and dominant and you know x y Z, which is
28:06
Speaker 1: I think what those philosophers you're talking about are trying
28:09
Speaker 1: to do. They're talking about this constant reversal of fortune
28:13
Speaker 1: that tends to come when we look at power dynamics
28:16
Speaker 1: and uh. And one of the guys that I loved
28:18
Speaker 1: the way he deals with this is Renee Gerrard. Renes.
28:22
Speaker 1: Grard talks about memetic violence and mimetic desire, and basically
28:27
Speaker 1: the idea is he says that, you know, we're we're
28:31
Speaker 1: constantly trying to emulate someone, right, So let's say, in
28:35
Speaker 1: this context, let's just say a sheesha, I'm going to
28:38
Speaker 1: try to emulate you, right, And so I'm gonna I'm
28:41
Speaker 1: going to try to be as much like you as possible.
28:44
Speaker 1: What your art says is, what your art says is
28:48
Speaker 1: eventually that will create conflicts, because if I want to
28:52
Speaker 1: be like you, you've got things that I want, and
28:56
Speaker 1: at some point we're going to come into conflict. Right,
29:01
Speaker 1: And then he says, basically, the only person this doesn't
29:03
Speaker 1: happen with is Jesus. When we are when we've set
29:07
Speaker 1: our eyes on Christ, when we say Jesus is the
29:09
Speaker 1: one I'm going to imitate, He's the one I'm going
29:11
Speaker 1: to become. We slough off our ambitions, we slough off
29:14
Speaker 1: our desires, and we decide Jesus is going to now
29:16
Speaker 1: determine what my desires are, what my ambitions are, what
29:19
Speaker 1: my life looks like. There's no lack of resources there,
29:24
Speaker 1: there's no competition. It just ultimately comes down to us
29:28
Speaker 1: becoming more and more and more conformed of the image
29:31
Speaker 1: of Christ. Now that's a real quick overview of ourn
29:34
Speaker 1: Asia art, but the basic idea is there. It's not
29:37
Speaker 1: a reversal of fortune, although in his mimasis for like
29:43
Speaker 1: when I'm wanting to be like you, that ultimately happens.
29:47
Speaker 1: There's a conflict. And so if I'm trying to be
29:49
Speaker 1: more like you and I get close enough and I
29:51
Speaker 1: can overtake you and sort of replace you. That's the
29:56
Speaker 1: sort of power relation that Nietzsche and Hegel and all
29:59
Speaker 1: those guys are taught talking about Fuco. That's what they're
30:02
Speaker 1: talking about, this reversal. And so he comes to the
30:05
Speaker 1: same point, but he makes room for Jesus that these
30:11
Speaker 1: you know, he doesn't exactly say it like this, but
30:13
Speaker 1: the implication is that we don't have the conflict with
30:17
Speaker 1: Christ because there is no need to have conflict with Christ.
30:20
Speaker 1: There's so much abundance there that in becoming more and
30:23
Speaker 1: more and more like Him, there's only more for everyone.
30:26
Speaker 1: There is no lack, and so there's no need for competition.
30:31
Speaker 1: There's a satisfaction that comes through this. And I think
30:34
Speaker 1: that those two points. Number one, we didn't deal with
30:37
Speaker 1: the text on manhood for you know, specific reasons. But
30:41
Speaker 1: then number two, this idea that imitating Christ is what
30:44
Speaker 1: we're aiming for, and that requires us to slough off
30:48
Speaker 1: some of our own desires and our own ambitions and
30:51
Speaker 1: take up the characteristics that Christ demonstrates as he goes
30:56
Speaker 1: through life. This is the essence of discipleship. I would
31:00
Speaker 1: argue that that is what it means, at least, that's
31:03
Speaker 1: the framework through which we discover what it means to
31:05
Speaker 1: be a male disciple of Christ and ultimately an individual disciple.
31:11
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think it's worth maybe teasing here that this model,
31:18
Speaker 2: then that Jesus gives is one of constantly self giving.
31:23
Speaker 1: Right.
31:24
Speaker 2: So, in the in the Upper Room discourse, as we
31:27
Speaker 2: describe it in the in the Gospel of John, right
31:29
Speaker 2: before he goes to get some many to be arrested,
31:32
Speaker 2: he has this great prayer in which he talks about
31:36
Speaker 2: being sent by the Father. Yeah, but then also talking
31:39
Speaker 2: about how the Father has given him and those whom
31:42
Speaker 2: he is the Father has given to him, in this
31:44
Speaker 2: case referring to his disciples that are in that room
31:46
Speaker 2: with him. Jesus is now giving those disciples to the world.
31:53
Speaker 1: Yeah.
31:55
Speaker 2: Right. And the implication seems to me like the pattern
31:59
Speaker 2: doesn't stop. It's not the Father gave them to me,
32:02
Speaker 2: and I then give them to the world. Heart stop
32:04
Speaker 2: the ends. It's sort of an ongoing cyclical reality that
32:09
Speaker 2: the disciples then presumably have those who are given to them,
32:14
Speaker 2: who they then give to the world. Now in their case,
32:19
Speaker 2: you can argue they were going to die, that had
32:20
Speaker 2: to happen. But in Jesus' case, right, his pending death
32:25
Speaker 2: at that moment, notwithstanding his resurrection, seems indicate he can
32:29
Speaker 2: take it all back. But that's not the pattern, right.
32:33
Speaker 2: The pattern here that there is to recognize and to
32:38
Speaker 2: imitate goes against what those other philosophers are saying. Not
32:42
Speaker 2: because what they've described is false. I think they do
32:44
Speaker 2: a good job actually describing how things tend to work
32:47
Speaker 2: in this enclosure of.
32:48
Speaker 1: The world, agreed.
32:50
Speaker 2: But what Jesus is doing is precisely breaking out of that,
32:52
Speaker 2: and not just by saying, hey, you break out of that,
32:56
Speaker 2: but being the one in his very self to break
33:00
Speaker 2: out of that by giving right. So, if anything, the
33:05
Speaker 2: lesson here is that what Jesus is commending here on
33:08
Speaker 2: the sermon in the Mount to these people who are
33:10
Speaker 2: the marginized by the religious leaders, who are themselves already
33:13
Speaker 2: marginized by the evil empire, this model that Jesus is
33:19
Speaker 2: conveying here is the very model that he then ends
33:22
Speaker 2: up providing in the giving of his very self on
33:24
Speaker 2: the cross, and in that the giving of his own
33:28
Speaker 2: gifts right, the gifts that the Father gave to him
33:30
Speaker 2: the disciples to the world to continue on. That's the
33:35
Speaker 2: lesson here for personhood and to your point by implication, menhood.
33:41
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I always I mean, just to piggyback on that,
33:44
Speaker 1: the way I usually phrase it is Jesus' life is
33:47
Speaker 1: the only one that ever resulted in resurrection, ascension and glorification.
33:52
Speaker 1: And so he's a pretty good model what he did
33:55
Speaker 1: we should do. And I know we make a big
33:58
Speaker 1: deal out of resurrection, as we should, but the reality
34:00
Speaker 1: is Lazarus is resurrected, you know, like we have other resurrections,
34:05
Speaker 1: this resurrection is different because now it results in this ascension.
34:08
Speaker 1: Jesus has given all that authority he sits at the
34:11
Speaker 1: right hand of God, he is now glorified. And in
34:14
Speaker 1: following him and following his ways and doing what he does,
34:18
Speaker 1: not in being macho, but in being what he was right,
34:23
Speaker 1: really understanding what he did his self, giving his selflessness,
34:28
Speaker 1: his unwavering faithfulness to the Father, right, his learned obedience
34:33
Speaker 1: through suffering, you know, pulling little Hebrews five eight there, like,
34:38
Speaker 1: these are the things that Jesus did, and so these
34:42
Speaker 1: are the things that we should be doing. And if
34:44
Speaker 1: we're not mastering those basics. I think it's very and
34:49
Speaker 1: as we get into this, we'll kind of transition out
34:52
Speaker 1: of this episode into the next. But as we get
34:55
Speaker 1: into some of the ideas that are put forth by
34:57
Speaker 1: popular creatures and or the elogians in this register, what
35:02
Speaker 1: I would say is, if we aren't mastering these basics
35:05
Speaker 1: of Jesus telling people to be more ambitious, more aggressive,
35:09
Speaker 1: exercise more dominion, I think are highly problematic because they're
35:15
Speaker 1: detached from a context, and really more than a context,
35:18
Speaker 1: they're detached from a person who shapes that ambition. Who's
35:25
Speaker 1: who defines that dominion? Right, what does it look like
35:29
Speaker 1: to have dominion? To me, it looks like an uncompromising
35:33
Speaker 1: faith despite the negative consequences of the world. That's what
35:36
Speaker 1: it means to have dominion, right. It doesn't mean taking
35:40
Speaker 1: control of the earth. It means living according to the
35:43
Speaker 1: authority of the kingdom, even when living in according to
35:46
Speaker 1: the authority of kingdom stinks like that's kind of it.
35:51
Speaker 1: Our dominion doesn't usually look like dominion, just like Jesus didn't,
35:55
Speaker 1: you know, Jesus's death on the cross didn't look like victory.
35:58
Speaker 1: And so I think when when we decouple these things.
36:01
Speaker 1: When we don't root them back in the kind of
36:03
Speaker 1: stuff we've been talking about in this episode, what we're
36:07
Speaker 1: going to end up with are severe distortions of our
36:13
Speaker 1: humanity where we're going to be exercising some of these
36:15
Speaker 1: characteristics that in and of themselves are not bad, but
36:18
Speaker 1: when they are ungoverned by the Word of God, and
36:22
Speaker 1: I mean that both in Jesus sense and the Scripture sense.
36:26
Speaker 1: When they're ungoverned by the Word of God, they are
36:29
Speaker 1: going to go off the rails. They're going to be distorted.
36:32
Speaker 1: They are going to fall back into, as you said,
36:35
Speaker 1: the hegel Fuku Nietzsche sort of phenomenologically correct way of
36:42
Speaker 1: exercising these characteristics. That's just the way of.
36:45
Speaker 2: Things, right.
36:48
Speaker 1: Well'll suck all right, We'll leave it there and we'll
36:51
Speaker 1: jump in the next episode. We're going to talk a
36:54
Speaker 1: little bit more about some very specific paradigms, and so
36:58
Speaker 1: we'll dig into some of the presentations of biblical masculinity
37:02
Speaker 1: in the next couple of episodes, just to give examples
37:05
Speaker 1: of some of the stuff we're talking about more conceptionally
37:07
Speaker 1: in these first couple of episodes. So come back on
37:10
Speaker 1: the next episode ashi USh, thanks for being here and
37:13
Speaker 1: we'll catch everybody on the next episode of Thinking Christian
37:15
Speaker 1: Take Care. I just want to take a second to
37:17
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37:20
Speaker 1: us on the Thinking Christian podcast. If you go to
37:22
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