Latest / Thinking Christian: Bible, Theology, and Culture / Beyond Stereotypes: Redrawing the Path for Male Discipleship

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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. I'm doctor James Spencer and I'm
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  Speaker 1: joined today by doctor Ashish Pharma, and we're going to
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  Speaker 1: be talking a little bit about how to I with maps,
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  Speaker 1: but specifically we're going to be talking about the methodological
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  Speaker 1: problem at the heart of a lot of the Biblical
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  Speaker 1: manhood conversation. And so this is this is going to
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  Speaker 1: be the first in a series discussing Biblical manhood and
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  Speaker 1: how we should be thinking about it a little bit differently.
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  Speaker 1: And today we thought it'd be smart to start with
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  Speaker 1: just a methodological conversation to kind of set the stage
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  Speaker 1: for everything that's coming next. And so thanks for being here.
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  Speaker 1: Looks any initial thoughts on this before we before we
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  Speaker 1: jump in.
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  Speaker 2: I always love methodological conversations. So you might need that
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  Speaker 2: fishing reel to reel me back in, and.
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  Speaker 1: That's totally good. Well, we talked a little bit about,
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  Speaker 1: you know, starting this out in terms of maps. There's
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  Speaker 1: a book it's actually titled How to Lie with Maps,
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  Speaker 1: And one of the things that the author notes there
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  Speaker 1: is that in every map, we as the people who
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  Speaker 1: are reading the map, allow for a certain degree of
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  Speaker 1: what he would call lying in a map. And so
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  Speaker 1: these are representations that are made by a cartographer that
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  Speaker 1: are basically necessary in order for the map to be functional.
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  Speaker 1: So you can imagine the map can't be an exact
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  Speaker 1: replica of the terrain and still have it be functional
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  Speaker 1: for us. It can't show all the detail. It has
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  Speaker 1: to be a summary and abbreviation. And so what he
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  Speaker 1: argues is that because we trust the cryptographers to abbreviate
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  Speaker 1: in an appropriate manner, then that opens it up to
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  Speaker 1: the cartographers potentially being able to lie to us in
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  Speaker 1: ways that we're not going to notice. And so that's
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  Speaker 1: the gist of sort of or an introduction to how
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  Speaker 1: he thinks about this mapping issue. And so the methodological
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  Speaker 1: problem probably is something around what Alvis Huxley talks about,
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  Speaker 1: which I kind of love his quote. He talks about
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  Speaker 1: abbreviation being a necessary evil and the abbreviator's job being
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  Speaker 1: to simplify but not to the point of falsification. And
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  Speaker 1: so the reality is that we're all abbreviating something. There's
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  Speaker 1: always something that's left out of our conversation. In other words,
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  Speaker 1: there's always more to say. But as we look at
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  Speaker 1: these maps, there's probably something that's happening here that is
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  Speaker 1: closing off additional conversation, bringing sort of an end to
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  Speaker 1: a dialogue, when in fact that dialogue should be kept open.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah. So from where I say, there's sort of two
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  Speaker 2: issues at play with the line. Yeah right, there's the
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  Speaker 2: one that's the necessary evil, the necessary evil of abbreviations,
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  Speaker 2: as you just put it, where when you think about
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  Speaker 2: a map, a map can only do so much, and
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  Speaker 2: so a given map is only going to do so much, right,
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  Speaker 2: like we think about maybe the most obvious example is
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  Speaker 2: that we live on a sphere, but most of our
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  Speaker 2: maps are not globes, right, and so you end up
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  Speaker 2: having Alaska, Northern Canada, Greenland, Northern Russia. Look disproportionately huge. Yeah,
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  Speaker 2: And that's just a function of what happens when you're
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  Speaker 2: taking lines of latitude and longitude and having to recast
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  Speaker 2: them on a flat on a flat, two dimensional surface
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  Speaker 2: rather than a sphere. And so the in the ideal situation,
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  Speaker 2: we understand that there is that problem. We don't overweigh
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  Speaker 2: the eye test of oh, Greenland's way bigger than whatever. Right,
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  Speaker 2: it is big, right, but it's not as disproportionally big
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  Speaker 2: as it looks there. And you know, that's where we
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  Speaker 2: can say maps are livable.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, you know.
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  Speaker 2: Related to that is the fact that if you have
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  Speaker 2: to consider what a map is for if you're looking
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  Speaker 2: for a roadmap, let's say we exist in a time
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  Speaker 2: where there's no Google Maps and GPS's and you're actually
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  Speaker 2: looking at a map. You don't want necessarily a topographical map.
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  Speaker 2: You don't want the mountains and the scale of the mountains.
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  Speaker 2: Which you want is the roads, right, and so the
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  Speaker 2: road outlysts is going to give you that. And again
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  Speaker 2: that's it. That's sort of a necessary reality of abbreviation.
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  Speaker 2: But I think there's a second issue as well, and
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  Speaker 2: that second issue is when we're not aware that there
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  Speaker 2: are those problems, and we begin to treat the map
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  Speaker 2: as if it is basic reality. Since we're talking methodologically,
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  Speaker 2: you know, one of the methodological ways of discussing this
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  Speaker 2: is first order, second order, and we don't need to
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  Speaker 2: get too caught up in that language other than to
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  Speaker 2: say that our language is inherently second order. Right, we
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  Speaker 2: we engage the world and descriptive ways that are meant
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  Speaker 2: to go on in the way that they've gone before. Right.
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  Speaker 2: We receive from our parents and from our societies, from
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  Speaker 2: our friends, our schools, the ways that we talk, and
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  Speaker 2: we carry those forward in relatively relatively confident ways. But
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  Speaker 2: the trouble comes in when we fail to recognize that
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  Speaker 2: that is a second order description. It's not the same
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  Speaker 2: thing as reality itself. It's already an organized way that's
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  Speaker 2: been given to us that we treat as normal. And
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  Speaker 2: that's where I think the methodological problem is most serious.
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  Speaker 2: That I think we have a tendency to hear pastors
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  Speaker 2: say certain things, well intentioned parents say things, well intentioned teachers,
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  Speaker 2: politicians perhaps, and we may not have that filter of
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  Speaker 2: being able to say, well, maybe they're not aware of
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  Speaker 2: the complexity of a conversation, or maybe they're not aware
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  Speaker 2: that they're already taking an interpretive room, and we don't
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  Speaker 2: necessarily want to always jump in and say they're deliberately
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  Speaker 2: trying to deceive us. So that sometimes happens, right, But
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  Speaker 2: when we have that sort of understandably naive position, the
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  Speaker 2: map becomes that second order reality becomes the default as
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  Speaker 2: if it is primary reality. And I think that in
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  Speaker 2: the conversation we're wanting to get into, this is especially
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  Speaker 2: significant of an issue.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's almost like reading a map but ignoring the legend.
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  Speaker 1: You know, if you were to sit back and say,
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  Speaker 1: you know, okay, yeah, Greenland is disproportionately large, is it?
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  Speaker 1: I don't really have a good sense of how big
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  Speaker 1: Greenland is. I know what it looks like on a map.
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  Speaker 1: It looks huge, right, and so, but I also know
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  Speaker 1: that the map is distorting that. So when I'm looking
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  Speaker 1: at the map, I'm not saying they've got all the
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  Speaker 1: relative sizes correct, right. What I'm looking at is they
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  Speaker 1: have the relative positions correct. This is about where Greenland is.
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  Speaker 1: It's not about size, it's about position. And so you
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  Speaker 1: do tend to sort of start to recognize and understand
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  Speaker 1: what's really happening.
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  Speaker 2: Here.
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  Speaker 1: And I think that as we as we think through
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  Speaker 1: all this in a methodological perspective, and you sit back
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  Speaker 1: and you say, well, what what would be the guiding idea,
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  Speaker 1: what would be the first order principles of you know,
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  Speaker 1: mapping out of biblical manhood. I think what we have
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  Speaker 1: to understand is we can't really start with where the
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  Speaker 1: culture believes that masculinity starts, how it represents masculinity to us.
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  Speaker 1: It's not that that's trivial. I think as we get
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  Speaker 1: into this series and we talk about the different you know,
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  Speaker 1: biblical texts where maybe Paul is addressing men in particular
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  Speaker 1: roles for instance, husband or father, it's not at all
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  Speaker 1: that the culture's perception of what it means to be
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  Speaker 1: a good husband or father, or even what it means
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  Speaker 1: to be masculine are irrelevant. It also, though, we have
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  Speaker 1: to realize that as those are second order and they're
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  Speaker 1: coming in, there has to be something first order underneath that.
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  Speaker 1: And I would argue that what that first order really
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  Speaker 1: is it's discipleship. And I think we probably have to
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  Speaker 1: get into a little bit of what discipleship is. But
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  Speaker 1: just for my shorthand, I would go to Matthew twenty
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  Speaker 1: eight eighteen through twenty and essentially say that discipleship is
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  Speaker 1: learning to live under the authority of Christ. And so
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  Speaker 1: the concern that I have with this current conversation around
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  Speaker 1: biblical manhood biblical masculinity is that we've created a separate authority,
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  Speaker 1: or we've accepted a second a separate authority than Christ
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  Speaker 1: when we're thinking about manhood, and that second authority is
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  Speaker 1: the cultural perceptions of masculinity. And if we look at
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  Speaker 1: that passage Matthew twenty eight eighteen through twent what we
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  Speaker 1: really are going to see is that it starts with
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  Speaker 1: Christ being given all authority. Then it goes into the
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  Speaker 1: logical consequence of that authority, which is, go and make
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  Speaker 1: disciples of all nations. Right, So what is making disciples mean?
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  Speaker 1: What it means bringing other people under the authority of Christ.
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  Speaker 1: It means helping them to recognize that Christ is an authority,
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  Speaker 1: committing to that through baptism, and then ultimately helping them
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  Speaker 1: understand what it looks like to observe all that Christ commanded.
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  Speaker 1: So all discipleship really, at least in that passage, stems
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  Speaker 1: from this idea of Jesus's the authority. And now we
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  Speaker 1: are learning to live in light of that authority. We're
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  Speaker 1: responding to that authority and not to some other authority.
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  Speaker 1: Even the language of baptized in the name of the Father,
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  Speaker 1: the Son, and the Holy Spirit, right, learning to observe
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  Speaker 1: all Christ commanded. We have these qualifiers that sort of
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  Speaker 1: narrow down and make very specific what it looks like
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  Speaker 1: to be a disciple. We're not you know, we're not
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  Speaker 1: baptized into any other name, and we're not to observe
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  Speaker 1: any other authority. Right that these things are exclusionary in
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  Speaker 1: a lot of ways. And so if we and I'm
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  Speaker 1: not sure whether that's what you mean by first order,
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  Speaker 1: but that's where my mind goes, right, So feel free
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  Speaker 1: to clarify that. But to me, that's where we start.
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  Speaker 1: We start with the reality of God his position as
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  Speaker 1: authority over us, and now what it means to become
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  Speaker 1: a man has to remain coupled to that in a
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  Speaker 1: way that makes obedience to Christ a necessity.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's not exactly what I meant by first order, right,
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  Speaker 2: But I don't know that what I meant by first
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  Speaker 2: order is really the point. I think what you're offering
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  Speaker 2: now is the compliment to if we're not going to
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  Speaker 2: treat a second order reality, you know, a map, a
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  Speaker 2: category as if it is the thing in in itself.
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  Speaker 2: Then we need to be able to get even if
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  Speaker 2: we don't necessarily know that, we can say once and
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  Speaker 2: for all time, this is what the thing is in
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  Speaker 2: and of itself. We need to get at what it
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  Speaker 2: ought to be. Right, And I think what you're getting
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  Speaker 2: at is a theological anthropology. Since we're into big words
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  Speaker 2: this episode, what does it mean to be a person,
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  Speaker 2: and specifically in a theological way in light of thinking
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  Speaker 2: of ourselves as people who are who we are because
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  Speaker 2: we are the created beings of a triune God. That's
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  Speaker 2: what we mean by the theological anthropology. And I think
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  Speaker 2: that basic reality before we get into content, and this
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  Speaker 2: is where we get in trouble. I think we jump
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  Speaker 2: into the content is that there's some notion of being
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  Speaker 2: like Christ. But that notion of being like Christ without
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  Speaker 2: being Christ, what I gather you're doing with discipleship has
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  Speaker 2: remarkably little actual material form commended to us in scripture. Yeah,
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  Speaker 2: and I think that the church, and again that's where
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  Speaker 2: I think it's a complement of the first order, right,
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  Speaker 2: because I want to pause there and just think a
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  Speaker 2: moment about why this is significant to distinguish the two. Yeah,
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  Speaker 2: we have our categories, and our categories entail things like
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  Speaker 2: a mammal is a certain kind of a vertebrate creature
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  Speaker 2: that gives lie birth and feeds its youth via milk
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  Speaker 2: right from the mother. And we have this other category
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  Speaker 2: such as fish, and a fish is also vertebrate creature,
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  Speaker 2: but reproduces via eggs. It doesn't feed the youth of
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  Speaker 2: its of its kind via milk from the mother. But
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  Speaker 2: these fish all live in the water, and so we
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  Speaker 2: tend to think of all these creatures in the water
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  Speaker 2: as fish. And then we have this strange creature like
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  Speaker 2: a manatee or a dolphin or a whale, who are
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  Speaker 2: entirely sea bound creatures, but they're mammals. And from a
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  Speaker 2: practical standpoint, the reason that we make these distinctions is
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  Speaker 2: because we're trying to lay out a careful understanding. Right,
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  Speaker 2: Maybe not us particularly, but scientists wanted to lay out
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  Speaker 2: a careful understanding of what type of creatures these are.
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  Speaker 2: That's a second order description, that's a category, it's a bucket.
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  Speaker 2: And the first order reality is that neither the piranha
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  Speaker 2: on one side, right in the fish category, nor the
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  Speaker 2: whale or the manatee on the mammal c category cares
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  Speaker 2: one lick about the category. It doesn't mean the category
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  Speaker 2: is unimportant for us, right, but it doesn't actually affect
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  Speaker 2: the daily life of the whale, because that category is
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  Speaker 2: already attuned to do something for us. It's a naming
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  Speaker 2: activity relative to us. But the life of the whale
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  Speaker 2: is the life of the whale, and the whale has
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  Speaker 2: to be worried more so about where do I find
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  Speaker 2: the food that I need for the day?
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  Speaker 1: Right right.
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  Speaker 2: Now? That same sort of I think reality comes unto
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  Speaker 2: us where we're not wanting to say maps are evil.
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  Speaker 2: They're doing something. But I think again, too often we
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  Speaker 2: view those maps as if they are reality, in the
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  Speaker 2: same ways we might view the relatively insignificant fact that
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  Speaker 2: we think of whales as mammals as reality. Well, it's
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  Speaker 2: not reality, it's it's our bucket. Biblical manhood similarly has
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: to be concerned about particular conversations. So, for whatever reasons,
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  Speaker 2: the conversation is a risen. It was a desire to
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  Speaker 2: give a map to people as to this is what
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  Speaker 2: you should live like Now, the question is is that
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  Speaker 2: a helpful map in a certain time and a certain place.
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  Speaker 2: Perhaps I'm not sure, but perhaps, But is that in
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  Speaker 2: and of itself the definition of that fancy word again
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: theological anthropology? Is this what God has said? This is
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  Speaker 2: what humanity ought to be? And there's sort of the
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  Speaker 2: crux of the question. And you and I want to
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: move forward, saying the goal here is less to be
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: concerned about the map, other than to identify the gap
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: between the map and the people. Right and now be
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  Speaker 2: able to articulate if we are considering discipleship, that material
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  Speaker 2: form of discipleship is far less certain. We get discipleship,
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  Speaker 2: but what does it look like? Here? One other quick parallel,
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  Speaker 2: like we might say, who's the true America? Is the
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: true American? The one who grows up in the so
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: called heartland, as some like to say, is the true American.
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  Speaker 2: The one who grows up in the heavily packed urban
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: center is the true American. Someone who's a suburbanite is
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: the true American? A New Englander or a Southerner, or
• 17:17
  Speaker 2: a Midwesterner, or a West Coaster or a mountain person.
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: It's a silly question at a certain point, right, Like
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: all of these people can be in our Americans, so
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: to expect people to be the same in all these
• 17:38
  Speaker 2: environments is utterly silly. Right. We build our houses different
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: in each place, We grow different crops in each place
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  Speaker 2: depending on the climate. The way that our muscle structures
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: work if we're in the mountains versus on the flatlands
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: are different. Yeah, and that's sort of the question that
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: I think you and I are trying to get at
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  Speaker 2: by offering a critique, but not a denigration of the map, right.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, It's interesting. When I went back through and
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: read some of the authors that will be interacting with,
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: there were some common threads, Right, what are to your point,
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  Speaker 1: the map might be good for a certain moment or
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: trying to react or respond to a certain moment. And
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: so a lot of what I what I was reading
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: it involves this, I don't know whether i'll call it,
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: let's just say it's a supposed crisis amongst men, especially
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: young men. How do you take responsibility? You know, how
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: do you own some of the characteristics that are normally
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: associated with, or have been traditionally associated with being a man,
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: being aggressive, being ambitious, being competent and confident in all
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: these kind of ideas, And what most of the people
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: that I read are saying is that we're starting to
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  Speaker 1: lose that, that we've overcorrected, let's say, from a time
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: when those characteristics used to be the pinnacle of everything.
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: Everybody needed these characteristics, Like there was this uber masculine
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: sort of understanding of yes, be ambitious, Yes, move forward, Yes,
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: be brazen, you know, be bold, pull yourself up by
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: your own bootstraps. And there's been this overcorrection away from
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: those to say that these things are now wrong to do,
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: that these are bad things to do. And so I
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: think a lot of the literature we're going to interact
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: with wants to rehab this perspective of saying, no, it's
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: not bad to be ambitious, it's not bad to have
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  Speaker 1: exercise responsibility, it's not bad to be confident and competent
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: in the areas that you're in. I don't think that's
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  Speaker 1: a bad diagnosis necessarily, right. I think the problem is
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  Speaker 1: that it's a reaction to something, and that in reacting
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: to something, it hasn't drawn back into the biblical and
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: theological resources the way that I think it should and
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: the way I think really every Christian ought to think
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  Speaker 1: it should right and just say like, we're not looking
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  Speaker 1: for brazen ambition, we're not looking for sheer aggression, like
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  Speaker 1: we all want those to be qualified and shaped, and
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  Speaker 1: I think everybody would acknowledge that. Unfortunately, I think a
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: lot of the literature on masculinity is over responding to
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: the overcorrection and not actually giving a set of resources
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: that would help young men be appropriately aggressive, be appropriately ambitious,
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  Speaker 1: and have those tendencies if they have them shaped by discipleship.
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  Speaker 1: And that, to me is a big part of the
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  Speaker 1: problem in sort of putting out this different prototype right
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: or even worse, as we'll kind of see as we
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: go through this, I think is framing Jesus as the
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: pinnacle of masculinity.
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  Speaker 2: Right.
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  Speaker 1: What we begin to see is that this sort of
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: slippage so that Jesus starts to look more like us
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: than we we're supposed to look like him. There's a
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: way in which we start to shape Jesus into who
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: we want him to be, as opposed to taking him
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: on his own terms. When we draw our map. You know,
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: as you've referenced in other places, you know, Jesus tends
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: to have broad shoulders and six pack abs, right, and
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: so you have these sort of pictures of Jesus where
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: everything he does is this uber masculine thing, even to
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: the point where some of the authors are saying that
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: when he cries at Lazarus's death, he cries like a
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: man in contrast to Mary, who cries like a woman. Now,
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: there's no indication in the text of this, but these
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: are the sort of aberrations that tend to come out
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: of this, And to me, it's the methodological problem is
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: that we're letting the cultural context the crisis that's being
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: identified that I think could be the right diagnosis, but
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: we're allowing that diagnosis then to dictate the solution and
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: rereading Jesus's life so that it comes out so it
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: turns out to be polar opposite of where the culture
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: wants us to go. But it's polar opposite in a
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: very odd, the cheese moish sort of way, as opposed
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: to allowing Jesus be countercultural in his own right and
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: then having us follow after that particular way of being human.
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, questions popped to my mind immediately, which is when
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: we start to do those sorts of grafting of Jesus
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: into our particular storylines, and we say he's masculine, and
• 23:14
  Speaker 2: then we have to go to something like Jesus wept,
• 23:16
  Speaker 2: and well, he cried like a man. I have to chuckle,
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: as you've pointed out, that's all the text says, Jesus wept.
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: That's it, right, Yeah, So before I even get to
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: what does it mean to cry like a man? Right,
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: how do we even know that he did? Apart from
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: some prior presumption that Jesus, you know, the argument would
• 23:47
  Speaker 2: go probably something like this, Jesus came as a man,
• 23:51
  Speaker 2: not a woman, as a man who is God as well.
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: He's the fullness of that representation of who a man is.
• 23:58
  Speaker 2: So he's not going to have any slippage and his
• 24:00
  Speaker 2: madness and start to devolve into womanness like so many
• 24:04
  Speaker 2: problems on so many levels, right, There no need to
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: get into those at the moment. But what we do
• 24:13
  Speaker 2: in those moments to get to our previous discussion on
• 24:16
  Speaker 2: maps is now that we have this important understanding of
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: what jesus masculinity is, which really is more of a
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: putting him into a prior mold. Yes, that says something
• 24:29
  Speaker 2: more about our time and a place. We've now created
• 24:32
  Speaker 2: a structure that is frankly violent. Right, because now we're
• 24:35
  Speaker 2: going to people and we're saying, so, unless you can
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: live into this, this thing that we don't actually know
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: that Jesus even lived into, but that we've decided he
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: does or did, you're something less than what a fully
• 24:49
  Speaker 2: man ought to be. Yeah, and I think you know,
• 24:54
  Speaker 2: you and I both have plenty of stories we could
• 24:56
  Speaker 2: tell of where that's gone. Amok, Right, where you have
• 25:01
  Speaker 2: you have people who grow up either on one side
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: embodying that. I suppose there's more than two sides here,
• 25:07
  Speaker 2: but could be a embodying that and then replicating it
• 25:11
  Speaker 2: b kind of by resignation, living into it in ways
• 25:18
  Speaker 2: that are self detrimental. Yeah, and don't don't really align
• 25:23
  Speaker 2: with what a person is, or just full on reject
• 25:28
  Speaker 2: it and in the process reject Jesus with it, which
• 25:35
  Speaker 2: creates a double problem. Right, We've got the problem of
• 25:38
  Speaker 2: not just rejecting it. Okay, so then how do you
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: fill the rejection? How do you fill that space? But
• 25:45
  Speaker 2: also what do we now do to try to go
• 25:48
  Speaker 2: to that person and say, hey, hey, that's not who
• 25:52
  Speaker 2: Jesus was. Forget it. I've heard about Jesus plenty. I'm
• 25:55
  Speaker 2: not doing this right. Yeah, real problems that is baked
• 26:01
  Speaker 2: into this, right that I'm tempted to say that, you know,
• 26:07
  Speaker 2: you have some people for whom this sort of manhood
• 26:11
  Speaker 2: discussion has been very helpful towards. And they're like the
• 26:14
  Speaker 2: people who are closer to the equator in that map
• 26:17
  Speaker 2: where there's less distortion. Sure, but the closer you get
• 26:20
  Speaker 2: to the polls you're less you're more likely to be distorted.
• 26:25
  Speaker 2: Now you're distorting a person. But I don't even know
• 26:28
  Speaker 2: that that's the way to go through with this, because
• 26:31
  Speaker 2: that seems to be giving credence to the idea of well,
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: there are some for whom this is good and others
• 26:37
  Speaker 2: it distorts them. But I'm not sure that it's good
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: for anybody to carry forward this particular idea of masculine. Now,
• 26:44
  Speaker 2: this is not saying if you're James Spencer and you
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: can bench five thousand pounds or whatever the exact number is,
• 26:52
  Speaker 2: that's bad, right, It's just simply saying it's actually neither
• 26:56
  Speaker 2: good nor bad on the anthropological discussion, neither finds a man,
• 27:00
  Speaker 2: nor does it not define a man. It just simply
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: tells us spot Jams Spencer.
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and that is where I think we want to
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: as we do this sort of methodological problem, if we
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: deal with it. As we deal with this methodological problem,
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: I think one of the things we also want to
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: keep in mind is that each of us embodies our
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: maleness differently. So there's this great book I really enjoy
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: James C. Scott. He wrote a book called Seeing Like
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: a State. And part of what he talks about and
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: Seeing like a State is that if you picture a forest,
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: it's got all the trees in it. You could go
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: in and you could touch and see each one of
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: the individual trees, and they're different in a myriad of ways.
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: But he says, when the state kind of gets in charge,
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: the state has to make things manageable, like it's part
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: of what the state does. It just it's part of
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: the function. And so instead of going in and looking
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: at the uniqueness of each individual tree, what they do
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: is they say, well, there's so many yards of wood
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: within the forest, and so they have to have these
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: measures right that you give them the ability to manage
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: some of what's there, to handle the resources. And so
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: even as we're talking about what does it really mean
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: to be a human, what does it really mean to
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: be a biblical a male disciple of Jesus Christ. We're
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: ramping that up to a level that has the potential
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: of minimizing individual difference. Right, You and I are both males,
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: but we're both very different people. We've had different upbringings,
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: We've had different experiences, we went to different colleges sometimes.
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: I mean, I know we both shared our Weekned experience,
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: but like we haven't had the same life, right, and
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: so we embody the world differently. So nothing that we're
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: going to say about being a male disciple of Jesus
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: Christ necessarily applies to both of us in the exact
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: same way. There has to be that individual individualization there
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: as well. Each person has to work it out out
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: for themselves, but that's worked out within a set of
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: boundaries and constraints. It's like, you can't just decide, well, no,
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: for me, this this you know, clear principle son in
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: scripture doesn't mean anything, right, I'm gonna I'm going to
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: depart from that and just do whatever I feel like doing.
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: It's not that sort of individualization, but it is a
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: We're confronted with a number of different situations as individuals,
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: and the way that we respond to those is going
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: to be unique depending on what we bring to the table.
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: I'm not I'm not a sensitive person generally. I don't
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: have like most of the people who know me, if
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: I gave them a hug when they're, you know, feeling bad,
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: they find that surprising because I'm just not a real
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: touchy feely guy. Right. The hugs don't come easy, right,
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: But I'm more the person that people would come to
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: if they're having like a strategic problem or you know,
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: something like that. Like I don't relate to people as
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: well with you know, the sort of emotion that would
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: yield a hug, as I am the sort of logic
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: that would yield the strategy. And so that's not good.
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: That's not bad, you know. Does it mean that I
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: need to be more fully well rounded? Probably, But it's
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: not like to be a man means you have to
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: give people strategy and avoid the hugs. That's not the point, right.
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: The point is that as I do this, that's just
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: more my pocket. That's where I am, right, and so
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: I think we want to not lose that either. So
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: in this methodological discussion, we're going to be talking sort
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: of this umbrella category of what does it mean to
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: be a mail disciple of Christ? But the reality is
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: that the specifics of that almost always are going to
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: differ from person to person.
• 30:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, to the point of discipleship that you brought up earlier.
• 30:55
  Speaker 2: The question then, more materially, is okay, James tagic guy,
• 31:00
  Speaker 2: not the go to him for a hug guy. Great?
• 31:06
  Speaker 2: So what does it look like for James to be
• 31:08
  Speaker 2: a faithful disciple as that strategic guy, in which that's
• 31:12
  Speaker 2: a valuable person as a member of a community, right,
• 31:17
  Speaker 2: And what does it look like for whoever it is
• 31:20
  Speaker 2: that's the touchy feely go to him for a hug guy, yes,
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: to do so as a valuable member of a community.
• 31:29
  Speaker 2: And specifically, what does it look like then in a
• 31:32
  Speaker 2: Christian theological conversation, for both to be quite quite reasonably
• 31:38
  Speaker 2: impossibly together to be transformed into the image of Christ
• 31:41
  Speaker 2: and continue to be James the strategic guy and person
• 31:45
  Speaker 2: be the hug guy. That's the kind of idea play.
• 31:50
  Speaker 2: And I want to I want to appeal briefly, I'm
• 31:54
  Speaker 2: gonna I'm going to ask to fine tune some of
• 31:56
  Speaker 2: the language you use. If we don't have to go
• 31:58
  Speaker 2: with the fine tune language but least to bring it up.
• 32:02
  Speaker 2: Kevin Van Whoser, theologian, he's very.
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: Very very much.
• 32:10
  Speaker 2: Interested in moving beyond principle language. Yeah, and I tend
• 32:13
  Speaker 2: to share his concern there. Right. The thing about principles
• 32:16
  Speaker 2: is that we we look at a story, or we
• 32:19
  Speaker 2: look at an event, or we look at a teaching,
• 32:22
  Speaker 2: and then we discern some core thing about it that
• 32:26
  Speaker 2: we can say, this is the timeless piece, and we
• 32:29
  Speaker 2: pull it out, and then we use that to draw
• 32:32
  Speaker 2: bridges of application to new environments. And I think what's
• 32:37
  Speaker 2: difficult about that, to quote the philosopher, well maybe not
• 32:40
  Speaker 2: quote to appeal to the philosopher kurekerguard, is that that
• 32:44
  Speaker 2: sort of timeless idea sounds wonderful, and to your realize,
• 32:49
  Speaker 2: we're not timeless beings. Yeah, we're somewhere at some place
• 32:54
  Speaker 2: in some time, and so timelessness is completely and utterly
• 32:59
  Speaker 2: useless to us. Yes, yeah, And to begin to even
• 33:03
  Speaker 2: take that timeless principle and distill it, we've already made
• 33:09
  Speaker 2: it time full. We've placed it in time using certain
• 33:12
  Speaker 2: kinds of language, in certain places, with certain people around us,
• 33:16
  Speaker 2: with certain cultures and categories. So we've never actually arrived
• 33:19
  Speaker 2: at it as a timeless thing. Yeah, And so what
• 33:24
  Speaker 2: we're really doing is we're saying, I'm drawing bridges of
• 33:27
  Speaker 2: application from my version of it or our version of
• 33:32
  Speaker 2: it somewhere else. And I think that might be where
• 33:35
  Speaker 2: the map problem has come in, where it ceased to
• 33:38
  Speaker 2: be a highly specific tool to help people in a
• 33:42
  Speaker 2: certain place do something, and we begin to confuse it
• 33:46
  Speaker 2: in that first order way with the thing in and
• 33:50
  Speaker 2: of itself, in this case the thing being reality, creation, personhood.
• 33:57
  Speaker 2: So Van Hoosier talks instead of principle to talk about paradigms. Now,
• 34:01
  Speaker 2: whether we use that language or not, who cares. But
• 34:03
  Speaker 2: the idea that he's trying to get out here is
• 34:05
  Speaker 2: that we're always trying to discern what it is that's
• 34:11
  Speaker 2: going on biblically and seeing if those Biblical realities can
• 34:15
  Speaker 2: serve as paradigms that intersect with my reality.
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 34:21
  Speaker 2: So I live in a time of indoor plumbing, as
• 34:24
  Speaker 2: do you, right, And we have air conditioning and heating systems,
• 34:29
  Speaker 2: we have cars, we have the internet, we have TVs
• 34:32
  Speaker 2: like we're in a podcast. None of those things are
• 34:35
  Speaker 2: in the biblical framework. Does that make it irrelevant to us?
• 34:37
  Speaker 2: Of course not? But The idea here is to say
• 34:40
  Speaker 2: there are certain certain things about us that haven't changed.
• 34:46
  Speaker 2: We have needs, we have desires, and so there are
• 34:48
  Speaker 2: pathosses that can move from the text and intersect with
• 34:52
  Speaker 2: our realities, and that's the place where we get these
• 34:56
  Speaker 2: interesting moments of meaning. But because of that, as we're
• 35:00
  Speaker 2: not talking about timeless principles, the reality is is that
• 35:05
  Speaker 2: we continue to have the conversation. Right, we begin to
• 35:09
  Speaker 2: ask the question of James and people paradigmatically like James,
• 35:15
  Speaker 2: the people exist, right, there are others like you would
• 35:19
  Speaker 2: have perhaps a similar avenue for being able to understand
• 35:23
  Speaker 2: within a larger holistic context, what does it mean to
• 35:26
  Speaker 2: be a man versus the person who's going to give
• 35:30
  Speaker 2: the hug? Right, And other people like that person who's
• 35:33
  Speaker 2: going to give the hug have a similar sort of
• 35:37
  Speaker 2: environment or paradigm that can intersect with the text, and
• 35:42
  Speaker 2: both are important. Right. I gather that that's why, whether
• 35:45
  Speaker 2: it be body imagery or vine imagery, marital imagery, that
• 35:49
  Speaker 2: these images in scripture are constantly speaking of interjoining realities.
• 35:55
  Speaker 2: And that's the kind of thing we want to get at,
• 35:57
  Speaker 2: not to again say there's no use, but to also
• 36:02
  Speaker 2: relativize what maps are because they are relative entities.
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I appreciate the language comment. I felt dirty as
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: soon as I said principles. So I'm with you there.
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: I usually use patterns, you know, if we think about
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: you know, Paul and the way he appeals to ancient Israel,
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: and he'll draw it across and he'll say, these things
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: were written for our understanding, these things were written as
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: lessons to us. He's really referring not to a principle,
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: to a whole pattern of activity that's going on in
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: the Old Testament. We see something very similar, I think
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: when he uses the law of the muscle docs and
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: and so he's not really pulling a principle out of that.
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: What he's highlighting, I think is a theological pattern, a
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: way of relating to God and world and others that
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: is encapsulated within this one command. And so I think
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: oftentime that's been treated as a principle, that timeless principle
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: idea that you're suggesting there, And I've sort of tried
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: to shy away from that language as well. Instead of paradigm,
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: I use patterns, but it's largely the same thing. And
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: so I think that's a good reminder that we're not
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: looking at these timeless truths that come out of here.
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: What we're really trying to say is there are all
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: these patterns that seem to recur as we relate with God,
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: with others and with creation, and so what we're trying
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: to figure out is what pattern to apply where? How
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: is it that these patterns inform our activities, How is
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: it that we participate with God and this agent arena?
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: And what could we learn from people in the past,
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: maybe those who are written in scripture, maybe other people
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: around us, maybe you know, folks from church history, whatever
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: that is. But what logics were they using to sort
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: of maneuver this new arena and how could those be
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: applicable to us today? I think that's probably is that
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: close to what you're getting at it is?
• 37:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I like pattern Let's go with pattern.
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: Sounds good? All right, Well, we're going to close this
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: episode out. So that was sort of our initial methodological discussion.
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: The next segment is going to be on redrawing the map,
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: and so we're going to look at what it looks
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: like to approach mail discipleship when the old framework has failed.
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: What happens if we throw away the old maps, what
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: do we do? And so we'll be a little bit
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: more constructive in this next one. So thanks Ashiush for
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: being here, thanks everybody for listening, and we'll catch on
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: the next episode of Thinking Christian Take Care. I just
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: want to take a second to thank the team at
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: Life Audio for their partnership with us on the Thinking
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: Christian podcast. If you go to lifeaudio dot com, you'll
• 38:38
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• 38:41
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