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Decaf Christian Men? with J. Chase Davis · The Becket Cook Show

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Speaker 3: Hey, guys, welcome to the show.
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Speaker 4: I have a very special guest, Chase Davis, and he's
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Speaker 4: written a new book called Offensive Christianity, Restoring the Strength
0:47
Speaker 4: of Men in a Feminized Age. It's fascinating read and
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Speaker 4: we're going to get into all of the details of
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Speaker 4: this book and some of the things are very surprising.
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Speaker 4: I was surprised by a lot of it and you'll
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Speaker 4: find it fascinating. But first award from our sponsor, Please
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Speaker 4: welcome Chase Davis.
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Speaker 1: Glad to be here. Thanks so much for having me on.
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Speaker 4: Good to have you so Offensive Christianity. Where Why did
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Speaker 4: why this title?
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Speaker 1: Well, I've went around a bunch of different titles with
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Speaker 1: the book. I was trying to come up with something
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Speaker 1: that obviously would catch people's attention. But it's definitely a
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Speaker 1: shift from my own ministry experience and kind of a
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Speaker 1: countercultural perspective on what a lot of evangelicals are sold today.
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Speaker 1: A lot of evangelicals are sold and in offensive Christianity
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Speaker 1: an offense Christianity that's kind of playing defense. Never once
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Speaker 1: it hurts people, hurt people's feelings, doesn't want to antagonize
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Speaker 1: anything like that. I was like, what is the opposite
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Speaker 1: of that? We want to go on offense. We want
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Speaker 1: offensive christian It's a double entendron purpose for these reasons.
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Speaker 1: So with offensive Christianity, what we're talking about is how
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Speaker 1: I mean, you're you're in LA. A lot of Hollywood
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Speaker 1: and a lot of the movies and kind of cultural
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Speaker 1: milieu that's out there will promote the idea that masculinity
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Speaker 1: itself is toxic, that it's a problem. I've even heard
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Speaker 1: of movie directors saying testosterone kind of needs to be eradicated.
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Speaker 1: And so we live in a day where men by
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Speaker 1: the very nature are viewed as offensive creatures. They're kind
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Speaker 1: of viewed as like these cave dwellers, these brutal creatures.
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Speaker 1: Almost named the book Brutal Christianity, but I thought that
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Speaker 1: it would even be way too spicy. So with offensive
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Speaker 1: because look, you by being a man today and today's
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Speaker 1: day and agent America in twenty twenty six will be
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Speaker 1: perceived to be offensive, and I'm just trying to get
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Speaker 1: you to embrace that. The other reality is that when
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Speaker 1: Christians go on offense, meaning we're not just playing defense,
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Speaker 1: we're not just settling for carve outs. We're trying to
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Speaker 1: achieve victory. We're trying to advance the Kingdom of God.
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Speaker 1: We're trying to get legal wins, cultural wins, and we're
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Speaker 1: taking the attack to the enemy, by which I mean,
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Speaker 1: of course, not physical attacks necessarily at all, but we're
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Speaker 1: talking about how do we advance Christ's lordship in every
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Speaker 1: sphere of life, every domain, and that's going to be
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Speaker 1: perceived as offensive. When you go on offense, a defense
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Speaker 1: doesn't appreciate that. They receive it as an offensive measure,
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Speaker 1: and so we shouldn't be afraid of that. I saw
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Speaker 1: this in my own state in Colorado. You may not
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Speaker 1: know this, some of your listeners may not, but you know,
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Speaker 1: back in the nineteen nineties, you know ancient history, now,
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Speaker 1: Colorado passed a ban on same sex marriage, and the
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Speaker 1: LGBTQ activists were so incensed by this, so offended by this.
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Speaker 1: Then instead of you know, backing off. They actually went
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Speaker 1: on the offense, and they took over the state. A
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Speaker 1: lot of Christians they took the wrong message, they learned
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Speaker 1: the wrong lesson from that, and they thought, well, we
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Speaker 1: upset them so much, we offended them so much that
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Speaker 1: they decided to fight back. So let's not take that
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Speaker 1: same posture. Let's not try to enact law that would
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Speaker 1: prevent sin. Instead, let's acquiesce. And that's what the church
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Speaker 1: has been doing, not just in Colorado but all over
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Speaker 1: the United States for too long. And so I'm calling
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Speaker 1: the church to take an offensive posture, to go on offense.
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Speaker 4: And Jack Phillips was a casualty in that whole debacle
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Speaker 4: in Colorado, and he actually was on the show a
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Speaker 4: while ago. But yeah, I mean, it's it's totally insane.
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Speaker 4: And your introduction, this is what you say. You say,
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Speaker 4: My central thesis is this Christian men, stripped of their
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Speaker 4: God given power by a culture that reduces manhood to
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Speaker 4: ideas and demands endless empathy, must embrace an offensive Christianity
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Speaker 4: that boldly asserts authority and action over passive reflection. Yes, sir,
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Speaker 4: So that's the thesis. That's the point of this book.
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Speaker 4: Why did you Why did you even decide to write
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Speaker 4: this book?
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Speaker 1: Now, Well, a lot of it comes from my story.
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Speaker 1: For the first nine years of my ministry, I was
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Speaker 1: kind of under the gaze of institutions like the Gospel
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Speaker 1: Coalition and other church network's affiliated with them that promoted
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Speaker 1: a kind of cultural and game strategy called faithful presence
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Speaker 1: or winsome witness. And twenty twenty came for me like
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Speaker 1: it did for everybody else, and it revealed a lot
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Speaker 1: to me. It was kind of an apocalypse moment for
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Speaker 1: a lot of people, a revelation of kind of three things,
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Speaker 1: particularly sex and gender related with transgenderism, race in America,
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Speaker 1: and of course COVID and kind of draconian laws that
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Speaker 1: were implemented in many places. And so with those three things,
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Speaker 1: I reevaluated, and I went back to God's word and
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Speaker 1: back to church history, and I said, hey, is this
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Speaker 1: really a durable strategy? Is this a biblical strategy? Is
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Speaker 1: it just permissible? Is it the only strategy? And what
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Speaker 1: I came to realize is that, look, this may be
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Speaker 1: one tool in your tool belt. You can you know,
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Speaker 1: if you want to run the Winsome Witness playbook and
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Speaker 1: see how that goes for you, go for it, But
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Speaker 1: I don't think it's a winning strategy for Christians today.
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Speaker 1: So I'm promoting a different strategy, and I'm particularly connecting
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Speaker 1: it to manhood. You know, this is written particularly for men.
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Speaker 1: It'll be a blessing for anyone that picks it up.
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Speaker 1: But for men today, you know, their concept of what
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Speaker 1: it means to be a great man, a good man,
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Speaker 1: a godly man is often reduced to kind of these
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Speaker 1: esoteric ideas, these ideals, and a lot of times there
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Speaker 1: is no difference. When you know pastors or Christian leaders
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Speaker 1: talk about what it means to be a good man,
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Speaker 1: it would be the same encouragement you would get for
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Speaker 1: an eighty two year old grandmother. So for a lot
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Speaker 1: of men, they're just encouraged to be old women in
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Speaker 1: terms of how the Bible is applied to their life.
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Speaker 1: And of course that's not what we see in the Bible,
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Speaker 1: that's not what we see throughout Church history. But in
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Speaker 1: our modern age, many men are struggling. They're kind of
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Speaker 1: grasping at straws. You see them kind of either larpen
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Speaker 1: or these other things, kind of taking on kind of
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Speaker 1: cultural tokens of what it means to be a man
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Speaker 1: with hunting, fishing and all this kind of stuff. Again,
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Speaker 1: not bad, that's fine. I like that stuff. But there's
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Speaker 1: something more fundamental I want to get out in the book,
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Speaker 1: and that's what I do. I get down to biology
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Speaker 1: and the creation of man and what God intended man
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Speaker 1: to be made for, which is glory and ultimately glory
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Speaker 1: and Him. And so that's a lot of the reason
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Speaker 1: I wrote the book. I mean, it's a timely book
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Speaker 1: in the sense that we're still dealing with a lot
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Speaker 1: of confusion around sex and our culture, and I don't
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Speaker 1: see Woke going away anytime soon. These people are deeply
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Speaker 1: entrenched in a really demonic ideology and their intent on
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Speaker 1: weaponizing it and imposing their way of life upon anyone
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Speaker 1: anywhere they have power. And so we need to embrace
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Speaker 1: this everywhere in America. And I'm convinced if every American
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Speaker 1: would read this book, and every Christian man would read
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Speaker 1: this book in America, then we would see a great
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Speaker 1: deal of spiritual renewal and kind of a revitalization of homes,
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Speaker 1: of churches, cities and states.
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Speaker 4: Yeah, and you may have just stated what the purpose
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Speaker 4: of the tell Us of Men is the glory of God.
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Speaker 4: But what is the because you talk about this in
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Speaker 4: chapter one, what is the tell us of men?
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Speaker 1: Yeah, the tell us of men is to glorify God
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Speaker 1: and enjoy in forever. But particularly what we're talking about
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Speaker 1: there is we're made for glory. So this gets a
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Speaker 1: little confusing. Not in the book, but you know, men
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Speaker 1: get confused in great sermons from preachers like John Piper,
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Speaker 1: or they study the Westminster Catechism or whatever it may be,
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Speaker 1: and they're like, yeah, I want to glorify God and
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Speaker 1: everything I do, yes and amen. And also we should
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Speaker 1: be pursuing that in life, that pursuit of the glorification
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Speaker 1: of God and all of life. There's lesser glories that
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Speaker 1: come along the way. And I think for a lot
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Speaker 1: of Christians that we need to distinguish here. We're not
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Speaker 1: saying we should bring glory to ourselves. We're not trying
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Speaker 1: to be self aggrandizing anything like that. We're just saying, look,
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Speaker 1: as we get married, have children, start businesses, whatever we do,
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Speaker 1: we're enjoying those things that God has given us talents
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Speaker 1: to achieve, and that itself brings glory to God. The
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Speaker 1: classic examples the Athlete on the field. The young man
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Speaker 1: in college who wins a national championship and gives glory
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Speaker 1: to God. He's still proud of his work. He's proud
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Speaker 1: of his accomplishment, but he's giving glory to God. This
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Speaker 1: is a wonderful thing. And many people, unfortunately, especially are
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Speaker 1: kind of big evangelical thought leaders, they kind of look
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Speaker 1: down on this as kind of a simplistic faith. I
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Speaker 1: think it's a beautiful faith, and I think more Christianity
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Speaker 1: to embrace. Look, you can achieve great things in life.
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Speaker 1: You should pursue power, you should pursue authority, of course,
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Speaker 1: submitted to God's will. But we want to pursue glory.
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Speaker 1: And ultimately, the glory that you are hungry for can
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Speaker 1: only be found through the blood of Jesus Christ, and
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Speaker 1: it can be found in the Father. And that's your
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Speaker 1: eternal destination. So that tell Us is our eternal destination,
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Speaker 1: will be in glory with God forever. And once we've
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Speaker 1: got that lined up, there's a lot of winds we
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Speaker 1: can have along the way.
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Speaker 4: We'll be right back after this short break. Yeah, And
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Speaker 4: you talk about the body and the physical body, and
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Speaker 4: you say in this same chapter, you say Christianity neglects
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Speaker 4: the reality of the body at its own peril. It
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Speaker 4: is a peculiar thing since the physical reality of our
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Speaker 4: bodies is central to our beliefs.
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Speaker 1: Explain, Jesus Christ rose from the grave, and he is
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Speaker 1: embodied now he took flesh, embodied flesh into heaven. So
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Speaker 1: the Son of God, seeded to the right hand of
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Speaker 1: the Father, firstborn from the dead, is now embodied. And
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Speaker 1: so for us to neglect the body, to ignore the body,
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Speaker 1: to not talk about the body, to act like Christian
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Speaker 1: spirituality is just kind of a gnostic you know, disembodied
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Speaker 1: faith is really unfaithful to our own testimony of who
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Speaker 1: Jesus Christ is. Christ came to redeem mankind, redeem all
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Speaker 1: things to himself, restore creation. And so when we neglect
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Speaker 1: the body and understanding what our bodies are for and
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Speaker 1: simply reduce Christianity to some kind of like escape hatch,
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Speaker 1: that we need to get rid of this shell and
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Speaker 1: then we can be truly ourselves, this is really an
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Speaker 1: unfaithful understanding of biblical passages regarding flesh and world and
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Speaker 1: also Church history in terms of how we should steward
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Speaker 1: our bodies. And so I think connecting manhood to biology
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Speaker 1: is really important. It's what set it's my work apart
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Speaker 1: from many other books on manhood today because I'm getting
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Speaker 1: into testosterone. I'm getting into these things where men today
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Speaker 1: do seem to be hollowed out and their very nature,
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Speaker 1: their lethargy, their a sayity, their laziness, their apathy, and
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Speaker 1: their lack of appetite is actually many times a result
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Speaker 1: of the fall, and it's a result of sin, and
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Speaker 1: it's also a result of environmental factors and biology and
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Speaker 1: being overweight and not fit and what we eat. All
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Speaker 1: of this is actually on the table for Christians to
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Speaker 1: talk about it, and I think we should and that's
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Speaker 1: why I write about it.
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Speaker 4: And it's kind of a This is kind of gnoscissism,
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Speaker 4: right when when you're separating the body and soul and
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Speaker 4: you talk about it in the book.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, it's anism. Anoscism is the reality that, of
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Speaker 1: course there's some kind of secret knowledge that the material world,
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Speaker 1: material reality is bad and like utterly corrupt to where
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Speaker 1: it's not redeemable, and there's this super secret, special spiritual
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Speaker 1: knowledge that we need to pursue that's kind of hidden
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Speaker 1: and only certain people can know it, and really what
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Speaker 1: we're aiming for is a disembodied eternity, and that's of
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Speaker 1: course not the Christian faith. That's why Christianity has reputed
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Speaker 1: it over and over again. But narcissism comes up in
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Speaker 1: the Church all throughout our history. It's one of the
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Speaker 1: devil's favorite ways to deceive Christians, is this gnostic belief
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Speaker 1: that somehow we cannot know true spirituality unless you know,
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Speaker 1: we're free from the material world. This is just not
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Speaker 1: what Christianity teaches at all. And so in that way,
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Speaker 1: the book is also an apologetic for Christianity to show, like, hey,
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Speaker 1: what you think you understand or what you've heard about
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Speaker 1: Christianity might have been a little off in terms of
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Speaker 1: how we treat our bodies and how we understand how
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Speaker 1: the Christian faith is not a disembodied faith.
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Speaker 4: Yeah, and narcissism was condemned as heresy in the third
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Speaker 4: century Ireonaus I think it was third century. And you
12:58
Speaker 4: say you mentioned this, I don't know how to say
13:01
Speaker 4: his name.
13:02
Speaker 3: Caleb Morrel Morell.
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Speaker 4: Yeah, but he talks about identity in Christ as a
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Speaker 4: recent theological innovation.
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Speaker 3: What is it that's kind of surprising to me?
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Speaker 1: What talk about that I'd love to, because no other
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Speaker 1: interviewer has asked me about this, and it's a really
13:16
Speaker 1: important topic that I think Christians need to pay attention to.
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Speaker 1: So as a pastor and a preacher myself, I want
13:24
Speaker 1: Christians to understand their salvation in Christ for that to
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Speaker 1: be a fundamental bedrock confidence they have that they are
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Speaker 1: found in Christ. They identify with Christ and his death
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Speaker 1: and his resurrection. These are really fundamental things about the
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Speaker 1: Christian faith. However, in our day, what we see identities
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Speaker 1: being formed into is kind of these personal choices, these
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Speaker 1: autonomous decisions that we make to come out or whatever
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Speaker 1: it may be that people choose to do, and that's
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Speaker 1: not how we want to understand salvation in Christ. Identity
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Speaker 1: in Christ really isn't written about in church history until
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Speaker 1: like the twenty century, nineteenth century, so it's a recent
14:02
Speaker 1: kind of attempt at self conception, self actualization. And I
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Speaker 1: think for many Christians, their confidence in Christ, their allegiance
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Speaker 1: and loyalty to God rest too lightly because they've reduced
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Speaker 1: the Christian faith to kind of an identity they put on.
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Speaker 1: So it's kind of a phase they go through, or
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Speaker 1: it's you know, I identify as a Christian. And it
14:26
Speaker 1: sounds nice because it speaks to kind of our modern
14:29
Speaker 1: age where everybody has an identity group and that's kind
14:33
Speaker 1: of in vogue. But I don't think it's the most
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Speaker 1: helpful language when we're talking about salvation in Christ and
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Speaker 1: what it means to trust in Christ for salvation and
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Speaker 1: being rooted in Christ. And really the theological concept we
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Speaker 1: want to get back to is union with Christ. This
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Speaker 1: is something that we see all throughout church history. Union
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Speaker 1: with Christ is a beautiful thing. But identity in Christ
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Speaker 1: is not something I necessarily attack in the pulpit are
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Speaker 1: and much writing. But it's an important insight that I'm
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Speaker 1: trying to get at, is that, Look, just be careful
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Speaker 1: that as you articulate and understand your union with Christ,
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Speaker 1: you're not reducing Christ. You're not reducing salvation to some
15:08
Speaker 1: kind of badge you put on or some kind of
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Speaker 1: you know, identity group thing that that many people use today.
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Speaker 4: Yeah, union with Christ, that's that's such an important thing
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Speaker 4: concept or theological concept, because that's why when you're united
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Speaker 4: to Christ, when you're born again and you're united to Christ.
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Speaker 4: That's why Paul says there's no there there's therefore no
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Speaker 4: condemnation in Christ, because if you could be condemned, then
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Speaker 4: that would mean Christ would have to be condemned. So
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Speaker 4: it doesn't make any sense. So I love the concept
15:44
Speaker 4: of union with Christ. It's very important you in your section,
15:50
Speaker 4: you have a section called modern Christianity has a masculated Men.
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Speaker 4: And I love this because you talk about worship songs
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Speaker 4: that have lyrics and musical arrangements that sound like love
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Speaker 4: songs to a boyfriend rather than worship.
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Speaker 3: I mean this.
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Speaker 4: I I've experienced this so much in churches where it's
16:11
Speaker 4: literally sounds like a.
16:12
Speaker 3: You know, shaw Dai song. I'm like, what is this?
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Speaker 3: It's how do we get how do we get out
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Speaker 3: of this hole? It's terrible.
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Speaker 1: It is terrible, and there's a lot of money backing
16:25
Speaker 1: the kind of Christian contemporary Christian music industry. There's a
16:28
Speaker 1: lot of Unfortunately, you know, I grew up in the church,
16:30
Speaker 1: so I I know all of this music. Uh you know,
16:33
Speaker 1: I was exposed to it at an early age. Some
16:35
Speaker 1: of them I still sing today. And so uh lifted Me?
16:39
Speaker 3: Do you know that song? Love Lifted Me?
16:41
Speaker 1: I don't know that song.
16:42
Speaker 3: It's the worst. It's like, what does that even mean?
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Speaker 3: Love lifted me well.
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Speaker 1: I remember listening to like Drawers of Clay back in
16:49
Speaker 1: the day, and a lot of the songs didn't mention Christ.
16:53
Speaker 1: It was just like you could sing it to a
16:55
Speaker 1: girlfriend or something. And so there's two reasons I think
16:58
Speaker 1: this is important. One it does posture Christianity is kind
17:03
Speaker 1: of this weird, inappropriate relationship to Christ, and it reduces
17:08
Speaker 1: men to kind of being girlfriends to Jesus the True Man.
17:12
Speaker 1: And the second is that, you know, as these songs
17:16
Speaker 1: become popular and as churches sing them, they're formational. And
17:20
Speaker 1: the danger is when we don't sing in church kind
17:24
Speaker 1: of psalms or hymns or spiritual songs that are very
17:27
Speaker 1: theologically rich and reverent, if we don't highlight reverence is
17:31
Speaker 1: a very important reality when we come to worship God.
17:34
Speaker 1: What a lot of young Christians will experience is they'll,
17:37
Speaker 1: you know, they're used to kind of this entertainment church
17:39
Speaker 1: where they go and they sing these really powerful songs
17:42
Speaker 1: in a dark room and all this kind of stuff,
17:43
Speaker 1: and then they go to a concert that's not Christian
17:46
Speaker 1: and they have the same kind of emotional experience and
17:50
Speaker 1: they go, what is this, Why do I have this
17:51
Speaker 1: similar emotional experience at a secular concert that I did
17:54
Speaker 1: in church. And I think it's because a lot of
17:57
Speaker 1: people have attached that emotional experience. They get on a
17:59
Speaker 1: Sunday morning with like, that's what it means to delight
18:02
Speaker 1: in Christ or be satisfying Christ, and all of a
18:04
Speaker 1: sudden they get the same kind of dopamine hit. The
18:06
Speaker 1: serotonin goes off at a secular concert, and now they're like,
18:10
Speaker 1: wait a second, I can get the same thing by
18:12
Speaker 1: just going out with my friends to a concert. And
18:14
Speaker 1: so what I'm trying to steer us back to is like,
18:17
Speaker 1: what does it mean to worship historically faithfully in a
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Speaker 1: Christian way? How does God design worship? Not getting too
18:23
Speaker 1: like weird on what songs are allowed and what instruments
18:26
Speaker 1: and all that kind of stuff, but just saying, hey,
18:28
Speaker 1: let's start with reverence. What does it look like to
18:30
Speaker 1: show up to church and be reverent before the Lord?
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Speaker 1: What does it look like to submit ourselves to him
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Speaker 1: that we're worshiping a holy God, a risen Savior, and
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Speaker 1: we're coming before him, not not as people who are
18:41
Speaker 1: ashamed to come beform, but glad to come perform, but
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Speaker 1: still honor and respect and esteem him greatly in everything
18:47
Speaker 1: we do, including our worship music. But a lot of
18:49
Speaker 1: worship music is just it feels emasculating to a lot
18:51
Speaker 1: of men. And instead, when you get a bunch of
18:53
Speaker 1: men in a room and they're singing just a traditional song,
18:55
Speaker 1: let's say, amazing, grace up tempo, all the men are leading.
18:59
Speaker 1: This is a powerful experience. It's very different than what
19:02
Speaker 1: the world has to offer. And I think that's what
19:04
Speaker 1: I'd love to see more churches get back to.
19:06
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's the Taylor Swift effect. I h yeah.
19:11
Speaker 4: I mean, not only is it reverent to to sing
19:15
Speaker 4: you know, old hymns or even the.
19:18
Speaker 3: Psalms obviously, but it's didactic.
19:22
Speaker 4: I mean it's it's like we we live in such
19:24
Speaker 4: a theologically anemic age. It's in evangelicalism, and I just
19:29
Speaker 4: I'm just boggle. It boggles my mind when when churches
19:35
Speaker 4: don't use the worship time to use hymns or other
19:40
Speaker 4: songs or spiritual songs to teach also as well, not
19:44
Speaker 4: just worship, but to teach like you know, very important
19:47
Speaker 4: theological doctrines. And instead it's love lifted me.
19:51
Speaker 3: So there you go.
19:53
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a lot of music that I mean, music
19:55
Speaker 1: is pedagogical, it is didacic, it will teach, And so
19:58
Speaker 1: these phrases get caught up in your mind and you'll
20:00
Speaker 1: hear yourself. This is why, you know, I love singing
20:03
Speaker 1: Christian songs with my children because I want them to
20:05
Speaker 1: stay with them like they stayed with me throughout my life.
20:08
Speaker 1: When I have either hard times or joyous times, I
20:11
Speaker 1: have a song on my heart that has been taught
20:13
Speaker 1: to me from an early age. And I want them
20:15
Speaker 1: to be singing good, theologically accurate songs that are true
20:19
Speaker 1: to the Bible, and not songs that are just kind
20:21
Speaker 1: of like you know, you could get anywhere else. And
20:23
Speaker 1: I honestly I'd rather have my children singing, you know,
20:27
Speaker 1: Onward Christian Soldiers, or these kind of classic hymns of
20:30
Speaker 1: old or I'm in the Lord's Army, these these things
20:34
Speaker 1: I say growing up in church, then a lot of
20:36
Speaker 1: the modern stuff you're going to hear on your local
20:38
Speaker 1: Christian radio.
20:39
Speaker 3: Yeah.
20:41
Speaker 4: And you and the second chapter of your book is
20:43
Speaker 4: called Men without Chest? Is that an allusion to Abolition
20:46
Speaker 4: of Man by C. S.
20:47
Speaker 3: Lewis?
20:48
Speaker 1: Yes, it is an illusion to the great Book that
20:50
Speaker 1: everyone should read.
20:51
Speaker 4: Yes, And you you mentioned six philosophical roots of immaterialism
20:57
Speaker 4: in modern Christianity, and we're not going to go through
21:00
Speaker 4: but if you could just touch on a couple, I'll
21:03
Speaker 4: just state.
21:04
Speaker 3: What they are.
21:04
Speaker 4: The Enlightenment number one, number two, Romanticism number three, Pietism
21:09
Speaker 4: number four, German higher criticism, number five, Nietzscheanism, number six, evangelicalism,
21:15
Speaker 4: which was surprising. So can you just talk about let's see,
21:21
Speaker 4: I mean, obviously the well touch on the Enlightenment and
21:25
Speaker 4: Pietism and it kind of flesh out that a little bit.
21:30
Speaker 1: Yeah, the Enlightenment was, you know, it's kind of the
21:33
Speaker 1: better rock of the modern world in terms of philosophy.
21:36
Speaker 1: And what it did is it reduced kind of humanity.
21:38
Speaker 1: It separated humanity into kind of what we could know
21:41
Speaker 1: and what we couldn't know, and a lot of those
21:42
Speaker 1: we writ in rationalism, so very very big on logic
21:45
Speaker 1: and reason, not so big on like family formation and
21:50
Speaker 1: understanding the nature of men. So you get, you know,
21:52
Speaker 1: the tabula rossa blank slate kind of approached to humanity.
21:57
Speaker 1: There's no original corruption and if we could just provide
22:00
Speaker 1: more education than ever, the world will just be better,
22:03
Speaker 1: you know, no caveats on that. And so the Enlightenment
22:07
Speaker 1: what it did is separated what could be known, So
22:10
Speaker 1: spiritual matters were reduced to subjective opinions. So Christianity or
22:15
Speaker 1: any kind of concern of faith and spirituality was an
22:18
Speaker 1: opinion that you might have. We need to use science, right,
22:21
Speaker 1: so when you hear trust the science today, this is
22:23
Speaker 1: an Enlightenment perspective where we just need to believe only
22:27
Speaker 1: what we can see. So it becomes very materialistic, and
22:29
Speaker 1: it kind of it disembows, disembodies man to where those
22:34
Speaker 1: higher matters, the soul, spiritual matters are just a matter
22:37
Speaker 1: of opinion. Material matters are now cut off from any
22:41
Speaker 1: kind of information from spiritual authority, and so now all
22:45
Speaker 1: we have is we're reduced to science. And so there's
22:47
Speaker 1: a lot of things that we are glad for the Enlightenment.
22:51
Speaker 1: We're thankful for. But there's a serious critique of making
22:53
Speaker 1: the book this kind of pairs with liberalism itself, a
22:56
Speaker 1: critique of liberalism, which arose during the time of the
22:59
Speaker 1: Enlightenment as being kind of the end all, be all
23:02
Speaker 1: end of history approached politics and social arrangements, and so, yeah,
23:06
Speaker 1: the Enlightenment is is like the starting point of the
23:09
Speaker 1: modern age, and I think for me, I'm kind of
23:12
Speaker 1: pinning this hollowed out man, this disembodied man, these gilded men,
23:16
Speaker 1: this movement throughout Western civilization and the Church specifically as
23:21
Speaker 1: being kind of starting there, and the pre modern Christians
23:24
Speaker 1: that you read, they really didn't have these same strange
23:27
Speaker 1: beliefs about body and soul.
23:29
Speaker 4: Yeah, and you touch on Jean Jaques Rousseau, who I
23:32
Speaker 4: don't know if you know the journalists Melan the British
23:34
Speaker 4: journalist Melanie Phillips, but she rightly calls Rousseau the greatest
23:40
Speaker 4: villain of all time.
23:42
Speaker 1: I haven't heard this.
23:44
Speaker 3: He Rousseau really just destroyed the West.
23:49
Speaker 4: I mean, he really did a number on the West
23:52
Speaker 4: and we're still seeing the ripple effects today. And you know,
23:57
Speaker 4: I would say one hundred percent of the left are
23:59
Speaker 4: rousseau Ian and they're not even aware of it, and
24:03
Speaker 4: some and some of the people on the ridar as well.
24:07
Speaker 4: But anyway, it's it's just really done a number on
24:11
Speaker 4: the culture.
24:13
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely. I mean the moving into the Romanticist movement,
24:17
Speaker 1: I mean it was kind of a rebellion against the
24:19
Speaker 1: Enlightenment in some ways, but kind of this getting back
24:21
Speaker 1: to nature, this primal state. You can see why it
24:25
Speaker 1: would be appealing, but this is not the way forward.
24:28
Speaker 1: I remember watching Into the Wild, which was a novel
24:32
Speaker 1: that they turned into a movie.
24:36
Speaker 3: Christ was Kristin Stewart and that and Sean Penn or something.
24:39
Speaker 1: No, no, no, that's a different one. This is the
24:41
Speaker 1: guy who goes into a goes to Alaska and lives
24:44
Speaker 1: in a bus and then dies from berries. Sorry spoiler
24:47
Speaker 1: alert on that, but you know it's a young man
24:50
Speaker 1: who's dissatisfied with the modern world. My sister saw it,
24:53
Speaker 1: My younger sister saw it before I did, and she
24:54
Speaker 1: was like, Chase, do not go see this movie because
24:56
Speaker 1: I'm afraid we'll become this guy. You'll just go into
24:58
Speaker 1: the wilderness that never come back. But no, that kind
25:03
Speaker 1: of romanticist instinct is very deeply rooted in a lot
25:06
Speaker 1: of men to get back into the wild, to get
25:09
Speaker 1: back to nature, to prove oneself, and really it reduces
25:14
Speaker 1: our experience in life to emotionalism. But it's kind of
25:18
Speaker 1: rooted connected with Pietism. So Pietism came up particularly through
25:23
Speaker 1: the Moravians, through Germans German Lutherans, and it was kind
25:27
Speaker 1: of supposed to be a spiritual renewal, spiritual revival movement
25:30
Speaker 1: where people would have a deep, deep experience with God,
25:34
Speaker 1: and that is what would really shape Christianity. And it
25:38
Speaker 1: really cut itself off from any ecclesial concerns or national concerns.
25:42
Speaker 1: It reduced the Christian faith to a private matter and
25:45
Speaker 1: made these other concerns very worldly, by which they meant dirty.
25:48
Speaker 1: And so Pietism got into kind of the Wesleyan movement,
25:51
Speaker 1: so that's methodist ecclesiology and spirituality, but it really got
25:55
Speaker 1: into American revival kind of emphasies throughout the nineteenth century.
26:00
Speaker 1: But Pietism still plays out today. A lot of Christians
26:04
Speaker 1: think politics is beneath them. They'll use phrases and kind
26:07
Speaker 1: of jargon to talk about how politics is dirty, we
26:10
Speaker 1: shouldn't get involved. I mean, they'll use misquoted and taken
26:14
Speaker 1: out of context versus from Jesus saying his kingdom is
26:17
Speaker 1: not of this world and that therefore justifies their apathy
26:19
Speaker 1: and passivity when it comes to engaging in cultural war
26:22
Speaker 1: type issues. And that's a Pietistic emphasis. That's not an
26:25
Speaker 1: accurate reading of what Christ was saying there. But this
26:28
Speaker 1: Pietism plagues many Christians, and it particularly meant it holds
26:32
Speaker 1: them back from being agenic creatures, who are powerful, creative,
26:36
Speaker 1: who can get things done, who take their dominion mandate seriously,
26:40
Speaker 1: who are pursuing glory and all of life, and pietism
26:42
Speaker 1: just kind of strips them down to an empty husk
26:45
Speaker 1: where the most important thing is that you have some
26:47
Speaker 1: kind of emotional experience with God, which, again, as a pastor,
26:51
Speaker 1: I want people to encounter the Lord emotionally. I want
26:54
Speaker 1: emotions do matter. I want them to be satisfying God
26:57
Speaker 1: in all areas of life. But that's simply one aspect,
27:00
Speaker 1: not the end all be all. The end all be
27:01
Speaker 1: all of the Christian life is not crying in church
27:04
Speaker 1: on a Sunday morning because you had this emotional experience.
27:08
Speaker 1: The end all be all of the Christian life is
27:09
Speaker 1: being found in Jesus Christ and obeying Him and pursuing
27:13
Speaker 1: righteousness and everything you do.
27:16
Speaker 3: Yeah.
27:18
Speaker 4: Well, and this is not to be confused with piety.
27:20
Speaker 4: So pietism is very different from piety, right.
27:23
Speaker 1: Yes, that's correct. Yeah, piety is something we all pursue.
27:26
Speaker 1: We want to be pious, meaning we want to obey
27:29
Speaker 1: and the Lord and pursue righteousness and holiness in our lives.
27:32
Speaker 1: We want to kill sin and put a death to sin.
27:34
Speaker 1: This is piety. This is having moral standards, customs, traditions
27:39
Speaker 1: that are rooted in the Christian faith. Where we're living
27:42
Speaker 1: out the Christian faith day to day, whether it's through
27:44
Speaker 1: personal devotion, prayer, all these kind of things. Piety is
27:47
Speaker 1: a beautiful thing. Pietism is a corruption of that very
27:51
Speaker 1: good thing.
27:53
Speaker 4: And lastly, on this topic, how is evangelicalism a root
27:59
Speaker 4: of immaterial realism in modern Christianity?
28:02
Speaker 1: Yeah, so evangelicalism, there's two ways to look at it.
28:05
Speaker 1: I haven't dumped the word evangelical a lot of people have,
28:08
Speaker 1: whether it's for social reasons or whatever. Evangelical is a
28:11
Speaker 1: Protestant word that goes back to the Protestant Reformation. It
28:14
Speaker 1: simply means, you know what people today might call gospel center,
28:18
Speaker 1: so to speak. But were people of the Gospel, were
28:20
Speaker 1: people of the good News, the Ewe and Gelion, and
28:22
Speaker 1: so evangelical is a historic Christian word, Protestant word. But
28:26
Speaker 1: it's also a social movement, a political movement, a socio
28:29
Speaker 1: political movement in the twentieth century, and that kind of
28:32
Speaker 1: came about after the fundamentalist had to fight with the modernist,
28:35
Speaker 1: and there was this kind of merging in the mid
28:37
Speaker 1: twentieth century with institutions like Christianity today and Evangelicalism try
28:41
Speaker 1: to kind of seek out a third way where we're
28:44
Speaker 1: going to, you know, not be the fundamentalist. We're not
28:47
Speaker 1: going to retreat into the backwoods and have our churches
28:50
Speaker 1: and just have walls up around ourselves away from the world,
28:54
Speaker 1: but we're also not going to compromise. At least that's
28:56
Speaker 1: how it started. What it morphed into was trying to
28:58
Speaker 1: maintain relevancy with culture. So you saw this with a
29:01
Speaker 1: secret sensitive movement where a lot of churches they stripped
29:05
Speaker 1: the cross down from the stage, they took church out
29:08
Speaker 1: of their church name. And just a funny anecdote on this,
29:12
Speaker 1: when we started our church, our church was just called
29:14
Speaker 1: the Well with very millennial sounding name, you know, and
29:19
Speaker 1: like a few years ago, once once we were going
29:21
Speaker 1: through kind of a reformation at our own church, I
29:23
Speaker 1: was like, we need to make sure on our church
29:24
Speaker 1: sign it says church we are the Well Church. Because
29:28
Speaker 1: a lot of a lot of kind of boomer style
29:30
Speaker 1: of churches not to critique Boomers, and I love my
29:32
Speaker 1: Boomer parents a lot of kind of that secret sensitive mindset.
29:35
Speaker 1: Whereas we're going to take the name church, we're going
29:37
Speaker 1: to take the name Babbist, We're just going to have
29:39
Speaker 1: a generic name like Willow Creek, right, And nobody knows
29:43
Speaker 1: what that means, but it seems safer to a non
29:46
Speaker 1: Christian audience because non Christian audience thinks church, they think bad.
29:50
Speaker 1: So we want to maintain relevance, and they kind of
29:52
Speaker 1: prioritize evangelism at the expense of feeding the sheep and
29:56
Speaker 1: protecting the sheep. And so this is how a lot
29:58
Speaker 1: of Christian mena become a masculated by evangelicalsm itself, is
30:02
Speaker 1: because there's there's a certain sense of shame that a
30:05
Speaker 1: lot of Christians feel about their own faith and unsteadiness.
30:08
Speaker 1: And a lot of these churches you go to, they're
30:09
Speaker 1: almost like what's I think the youth call it like
30:12
Speaker 1: a pick me girl, like a pick me church. Like
30:15
Speaker 1: they seem desperate for people to come, like you go,
30:18
Speaker 1: and they have the signs, they hold them up. You're
30:20
Speaker 1: welcome here, We're so glad you're here. Oh, here's some coffee.
30:23
Speaker 1: What can we do what can we We'll do anything
30:26
Speaker 1: just to keep you here. You know, there's a desperation
30:29
Speaker 1: and this secret sensitive and to a man, this is
30:31
Speaker 1: kind of disgusting behavior. It's very you know, yuck. Like.
30:35
Speaker 1: We don't want to be treated this way. You know,
30:38
Speaker 1: we want to confident Christian faith, not this kind of
30:41
Speaker 1: desperate Christian faith.
30:43
Speaker 4: It's funny because, uh, you know, my church is Reality
30:48
Speaker 4: LA and there's no church in the name. And I'm
30:51
Speaker 4: just realizing, you know, after you said that, I'm realizing
30:54
Speaker 4: that's why probably, And and there's churches in LA. Like
30:58
Speaker 4: there's a church called m you know, and when I
31:02
Speaker 4: hear that name, I immediately just flee from I'm.
31:05
Speaker 1: Just like, this is sounds weird.
31:09
Speaker 3: Obviously this church is like, you know, and then there's
31:11
Speaker 3: like a church I think.
31:12
Speaker 4: Called the Core and Zoe and uh or Zoe, I
31:17
Speaker 4: don't know which one it is. Uh yeah, but all
31:20
Speaker 4: the I think I think all the churches in LA
31:24
Speaker 4: are just like these kind of you know, catchy little names.
31:29
Speaker 1: Yeah, there was a weird moment in time where that
31:31
Speaker 1: could have been an effective strategy. But when I'm seeing
31:34
Speaker 1: I'm a pastor in Boulder, and what I'm seeing is
31:37
Speaker 1: I'm encountering a lot of people who don't even know
31:41
Speaker 1: uh stories from the Bible, like basic kind of stuff
31:44
Speaker 1: that I grew up with, you know, uh, story about
31:47
Speaker 1: Noah and the flood. Yeah, I don't know who Noah is.
31:50
Speaker 1: It's like, wow, Okay, So you think about you think
31:54
Speaker 1: about people looking for a church, you know, uh, they're
31:58
Speaker 1: gonna look for something that says church because a lot
32:01
Speaker 1: of people just they don't even have categories anymore. And
32:04
Speaker 1: so we need to like just be confident that hey,
32:08
Speaker 1: we're this way, we're at church. We're not ashamed of
32:10
Speaker 1: other Christians. We're not special in the grand scheme of
32:13
Speaker 1: things where our church isn't like that unique. We're just
32:16
Speaker 1: trying to be the most normal church and Boulder and
32:18
Speaker 1: it's really not that hard because there's a lot of
32:21
Speaker 1: craziness out here. And so, yeah, it was a very
32:25
Speaker 1: interesting strategy for about twenty years. But I think that
32:28
Speaker 1: strategy is run its course. We need to get back
32:30
Speaker 1: to just like good church names like faithful, understandable, and
32:33
Speaker 1: that'll help people connect with God more.
32:36
Speaker 3: Yeah, I agree. Yeah, And in a chapter you call
32:41
Speaker 3: meek not weak.
32:42
Speaker 4: You say the following, if you could comment on this,
32:45
Speaker 4: You say, meekness is not the absence of power, it
32:48
Speaker 4: is the presence of mastery.
32:51
Speaker 1: Yes, meekness is not the absence of power. So what
32:54
Speaker 1: a lot of people interpret meekness to be is almost
32:57
Speaker 1: you have to become a dormat, and you must become
33:02
Speaker 1: weak in an inappropriate sense. So when we talk about meanness,
33:06
Speaker 1: the illustration I use in the book and elsewhere, as
33:08
Speaker 1: we think about a horse being meeked, when you get
33:12
Speaker 1: a wild horse, which I've never done, it would be
33:14
Speaker 1: very exciting as a man if we lived in the
33:16
Speaker 1: West and we could go find a wild horse and
33:19
Speaker 1: break it and tame it and meek it. What it
33:21
Speaker 1: means is we're not breaking that horse to the point
33:23
Speaker 1: where it's unrideable. We're not breaking the horse to where
33:25
Speaker 1: it's very spirit is broken, where it loses vitality and
33:28
Speaker 1: spiritedness about it. We're bringing it into submission for a
33:31
Speaker 1: certain task, for a purpose. The same thing is true men.
33:35
Speaker 1: When we call men to be meek, not weak, we're
33:37
Speaker 1: calling them to submit their power to God, not so
33:41
Speaker 1: that they have no power, but so their power can
33:44
Speaker 1: be used under control for God's purposes. And so this
33:47
Speaker 1: meek man is a gentleman. He's one who has power,
33:51
Speaker 1: knows what power he has, and then uses it prudently.
33:55
Speaker 1: So you're going to use your power differently in different situations.
34:00
Speaker 1: Is going to be you know, filled with righteous indignation
34:03
Speaker 1: at every slight. You're going to reserve that for certain
34:06
Speaker 1: sins that are you know, high handed sins against the Lord.
34:10
Speaker 1: When you become a parent, you learn how to do
34:12
Speaker 1: this as you go. You're learning on the fly, and
34:15
Speaker 1: you have to learn how to be meek and how
34:18
Speaker 1: to use the power and authority that God has given
34:20
Speaker 1: you as a father, particularly in raising children. And so
34:23
Speaker 1: for a lot of Christians, they've taken the verse that
34:25
Speaker 1: the meek will inherit the earth. They've taken it and
34:27
Speaker 1: twisted it to mean the weak will inherit the earth.
34:30
Speaker 1: And that's not what Jesus teaches. We should, of course
34:35
Speaker 1: be happy to go to the Lord in our weaknesses
34:37
Speaker 1: and our struggles. We should go to him in submission
34:40
Speaker 1: and repentance where we sin. But that meetness is a
34:43
Speaker 1: call to mastery and having control over your appetites, over
34:47
Speaker 1: your desires, and submitting all of it to Christ Jesus.
34:52
Speaker 3: That's good clarification. So yeah, and then a chapter you
34:56
Speaker 3: do on work.
34:57
Speaker 4: It's called do your Job, talk about some of some
35:01
Speaker 4: of the challenges men face today in terms of work.
35:05
Speaker 1: Yeah, the modern age for men, for many men, is
35:09
Speaker 1: deeply unsatisfying. So a lot of the especially my age cohort,
35:14
Speaker 1: we were sold opportunities jobs that we would have work
35:18
Speaker 1: with kind of a vision of saving up getting to retirement.
35:22
Speaker 1: But they were a lot of desk jobs. So it's
35:24
Speaker 1: a lot of computer work. And this isn't just true
35:26
Speaker 1: for men my age. It's true for a lot of men.
35:29
Speaker 1: We're very much tied to devices, to blue screens, and
35:35
Speaker 1: we find this deeply unsatisfying. At the end of the day,
35:38
Speaker 1: we don't have much to show. Maybe we write a book,
35:41
Speaker 1: maybe we had you know, when I got that physical
35:42
Speaker 1: book in my hand, I was like, yes, it's actually
35:44
Speaker 1: something real and not something just online. And so a
35:48
Speaker 1: lot of the online world we live in is deeply dissatisfied.
35:51
Speaker 1: It's deceiving because it there's kind of some reward we
35:55
Speaker 1: get by sending these emails and text and catching up
35:57
Speaker 1: on notifications or whatever may be. But a lot of
36:00
Speaker 1: times men will find deeper satisfaction and actual physical work,
36:04
Speaker 1: whether it's carpentry, being electrician, whatever it may be. This
36:06
Speaker 1: was my first career. My first vocation before I became
36:09
Speaker 1: a pastor was for a general contractor. And when I
36:12
Speaker 1: worked for the general contractor, they put me behind a
36:14
Speaker 1: desk and they're like, you're going to be behind a
36:16
Speaker 1: desk for the next ten years. And I was like, yeah,
36:17
Speaker 1: I don't want to do that. I'm out. I'm not
36:20
Speaker 1: doing that kind of work. And so what happens to
36:22
Speaker 1: men is they become unsatisfied and don't understand the purpose
36:26
Speaker 1: of work. God design work. It's a prefall reality that
36:29
Speaker 1: we're called to work. We're called to tend the garden
36:32
Speaker 1: to make the rest of the world look like the
36:34
Speaker 1: garden of Eden. The garden of Eden was the divine
36:37
Speaker 1: blueprint in which Adam was called to then go exercise
36:40
Speaker 1: dominion and subdue the earth and make it like the garden.
36:43
Speaker 1: And so work is a prefall reality. But a lot
36:46
Speaker 1: of men are hindered because they have jobs that are
36:47
Speaker 1: deeply unsatisfying to them. As much as they may make,
36:50
Speaker 1: however much they make, they're still trying to get to
36:52
Speaker 1: a place where they don't have to sit behind a
36:53
Speaker 1: screen all day, and yet this is what a lot
36:56
Speaker 1: of guys have been reduced to. And so the challenge
37:00
Speaker 1: is not for a lot of guys today, at least
37:02
Speaker 1: that I talked to. It's like, look, I'm not asking
37:05
Speaker 1: you to just quit your job and give up that
37:07
Speaker 1: nice paycheck you've got to provide for your family, but
37:10
Speaker 1: I'm encouraging you to get out and get active because
37:13
Speaker 1: this sedentary life where you're inactive, you're not working out,
37:16
Speaker 1: you're not doing anything with your body. It's handicapping you
37:20
Speaker 1: spiritually and as a man. It's not aiding you in
37:24
Speaker 1: your quest for glory. It's not helping you achieve greatness
37:27
Speaker 1: because you're just lethargic. You're just sitting around all day.
37:31
Speaker 1: And we know biologically when we work out, when we
37:34
Speaker 1: do things physically, all of a sudden we cheer up
37:37
Speaker 1: a little bit. Well, all of a sudden, we have
37:39
Speaker 1: a body, we can use it, We can be physically active.
37:41
Speaker 1: This is why I have my kids in sports, this
37:43
Speaker 1: is why I work out. And you won't hear a
37:45
Speaker 1: lot about this in church history. You know that if
37:47
Speaker 1: you go look up the patristics on weightlifting, there's not
37:50
Speaker 1: a lot of insight they're going to offer because most
37:53
Speaker 1: of the work was a graririan around them. There were
37:55
Speaker 1: outside a lot. It's just simply a modern problem that
37:59
Speaker 1: we face with the kind of industrial revolution where a
38:02
Speaker 1: lot of work has been reduced to technology. And so
38:06
Speaker 1: we don't need to throw off the technology. We don't
38:09
Speaker 1: need to become Luddites about it, but we do need
38:11
Speaker 1: to be mindful of what it's doing to us biologically,
38:13
Speaker 1: which is many times making us more depressed, more anxious,
38:17
Speaker 1: more lethargic, lacking energy. And so this is why I
38:20
Speaker 1: talk about working out in the book and why it's
38:22
Speaker 1: so important.
38:23
Speaker 4: Yeah, I ride my bike every day for an hour.
38:27
Speaker 4: I ride it into Beverly Hills, which is like five
38:30
Speaker 4: blocks that way, because it's safer Beverly Hills to ride
38:34
Speaker 4: your bike. The streets are wider and there's bike paths.
38:37
Speaker 4: But I mean, I do that every day, and I
38:39
Speaker 4: work out too, but I but just the process of
38:43
Speaker 4: doing that every day and riding my bike and getting
38:46
Speaker 4: out in the sunshine and the air, and it's so
38:49
Speaker 4: just healthy, not only physically but mentally for me. And
38:53
Speaker 4: you mentioned horses that I you know, I My fantasy
38:56
Speaker 4: is to somehow get into a career where where where
39:00
Speaker 4: I just ride horses all the time. I as a kid,
39:03
Speaker 4: I rode horses a lot in Texas and it's one
39:06
Speaker 4: of the most fun, exhilarating things to do is ride
39:11
Speaker 4: a horse.
39:12
Speaker 1: It's great. I'm gonna do that hopefully next week. Yeah,
39:15
Speaker 1: I love good riding horses. I think every American male
39:19
Speaker 1: should be required we should replace some of the social
39:21
Speaker 1: sciences with just equestrian class where you just go ride
39:24
Speaker 1: horses for an hour every day in school. I think
39:27
Speaker 1: that would be wonderful for people. But yeah, and there's
39:31
Speaker 1: a lot of interest today and kind of this alternative health,
39:34
Speaker 1: alternative medicine, different theories on you know, what's happened to
39:37
Speaker 1: our bodies, whether it's chemicals or food or whatever it is.
39:42
Speaker 1: And I think Christianity is not something that we need.
39:45
Speaker 1: It's not as Christians we can't speak to this. Actually
39:47
Speaker 1: we can speak to it with a lot of authority
39:48
Speaker 1: because God made everything. God made everything good by design,
39:52
Speaker 1: and so this is why I think the body is
39:54
Speaker 1: really important to talk about, because these things do impact
39:57
Speaker 1: your life. I think of one social study I read historically,
40:00
Speaker 1: I'm what some people would call a cynic. You know,
40:04
Speaker 1: I'm kind of given to bouts of melancholy every once
40:06
Speaker 1: in a while. I grew up and I was listening
40:08
Speaker 1: to emo music. This is known by my friends, but
40:12
Speaker 1: I read, Yeah, I read a book by kind of
40:16
Speaker 1: a secular book, social psychology, on the power of optimism,
40:20
Speaker 1: and I found this peculiar as a Christian because it's
40:23
Speaker 1: not talked about a lot in Christian circles, particularly the
40:26
Speaker 1: circles I run in, which has reformed Christianity. A lot
40:30
Speaker 1: of the charismatics tend to talk about kind of you know,
40:33
Speaker 1: having a hopeful spirit, joying Christ. And what the social
40:37
Speaker 1: psychologists discovered is that look, having just an optimistic outlook
40:41
Speaker 1: that things are going to work out leads to better
40:44
Speaker 1: life outcomes. And as Christians, we should be championing that.
40:47
Speaker 1: Of course, yes, ultimately, that that satisfaction, that hope is
40:51
Speaker 1: only found in Christ and we can promote that, and
40:54
Speaker 1: I will promote that to my dying breath, that it's
40:57
Speaker 1: Christ who gives us that great hope, that optimist experience,
41:00
Speaker 1: not that we're never sad, not that we can't be sad,
41:03
Speaker 1: but that we should have a great deal of hope,
41:05
Speaker 1: and a lot of it is tied to how we
41:06
Speaker 1: live our lives. Because if we go to church on
41:09
Speaker 1: Sunday and we're preached to to say, have hope and
41:12
Speaker 1: Christ have joined Christ. But the rest of the week
41:14
Speaker 1: we're just sedentary, we're just sitting around, we're not doing anything,
41:17
Speaker 1: it's going to be very hard to experience that joy
41:19
Speaker 1: that the Lord has for us.
41:21
Speaker 3: This was surprise.
41:22
Speaker 4: I forgot about this, but you in the section called
41:26
Speaker 4: men must defend. I was surprised. I forgot. I remembered
41:31
Speaker 4: this happened. But this reminded me when John Piper famously
41:35
Speaker 4: downplayed the responsibility of men in a now deleted article
41:40
Speaker 4: from twenty fifteen, where he's you got to explain why.
41:44
Speaker 4: I can't remember why he said this, but he suggested
41:47
Speaker 4: that he would not stop an intruder from violating his
41:51
Speaker 4: home and his wife.
41:53
Speaker 1: Correct.
41:54
Speaker 3: Why did he say? I don't even understand why he
41:56
Speaker 3: would say something like that.
41:58
Speaker 1: Well, there's a lot of Christian men who wonder about
42:00
Speaker 1: these things theologically, and Pastor John is typically great. You know,
42:03
Speaker 1: he does ask Pastor John stuff. I've benefited from that.
42:06
Speaker 1: So a lot of Christian men are wondering, like, hey,
42:08
Speaker 1: you know, based on the love of Christ. Based on
42:10
Speaker 1: the teachings of Christ, what does it look like to
42:12
Speaker 1: practice self defense? And apparently Piper is a pacifist when
42:16
Speaker 1: it comes to these things which most people read this.
42:19
Speaker 1: This is like a thing that comes up over and
42:22
Speaker 1: over again when people read my book is they're like, wait, what,
42:25
Speaker 1: like yeah, not only that Piper isn't alone in that.
42:29
Speaker 1: So if you ask a lot of Christian men or pastors,
42:33
Speaker 1: this is something that is not one not talked about
42:36
Speaker 1: biblically and historically, but often they're kind of dissuaded from
42:41
Speaker 1: practicing self defense. People here turn the other cheek and
42:43
Speaker 1: they assume the secular line. It's effect to the church
42:47
Speaker 1: is that Christians can never defend themselves right, We just
42:50
Speaker 1: have to do whatever the enemy wants. And this is
42:53
Speaker 1: just a total contortion of what Jesus was teaching. Jesus
42:56
Speaker 1: was teaching us how to overlook offenses among brothers. If
42:59
Speaker 1: we cause a light for rude, you know, turn the
43:02
Speaker 1: other cheek, meaning like, think nothing of it. Not that
43:05
Speaker 1: if somebody punches us in the face we have to
43:08
Speaker 1: like basically take another punch. That's not the the ethics
43:12
Speaker 1: of Christ. And we have duties as husbands as fathers
43:16
Speaker 1: to protect those to be willing what Christ said, to
43:19
Speaker 1: sacrifice our lives, to put our lives on the line,
43:22
Speaker 1: to defend life. And unfortunately, I think Pastor John misses
43:26
Speaker 1: the mark. But he's not alone in that. I just
43:27
Speaker 1: singled him out because a lot of people know his name.
43:30
Speaker 1: But I think this kind of teaching, this contortion of
43:33
Speaker 1: scriptures very very common and aready, and it's leaning a
43:36
Speaker 1: lot of Christians to have a distaste for righteous, you know,
43:41
Speaker 1: acts of the state. For example, with the death penalty.
43:44
Speaker 1: A lot of Christians don't like the idea of a
43:46
Speaker 1: death penalty. They think it cruel or unjust, and they
43:50
Speaker 1: think of Christ has been merciful with us, then how
43:52
Speaker 1: could we ever authorize the state to put someone to
43:54
Speaker 1: death where biblically we see the death penalty is totally
43:58
Speaker 1: on the table. In fact, it's part of God's law.
44:01
Speaker 1: How it gets applied today is a different story, and
44:03
Speaker 1: that's a different topic for another conversation. But that kind
44:06
Speaker 1: of distaste that a lot of Christians have for that
44:08
Speaker 1: kind of punitive action stems from this kind of mindset
44:12
Speaker 1: where it's kind of this demasculinized Christianity where we can
44:17
Speaker 1: assert ourselves. We cannot enforce law, and we cannot even
44:21
Speaker 1: go so far as to execute those who are deserving
44:23
Speaker 1: of execution.
44:25
Speaker 4: Yeah, I just thought of the pastor John.
44:29
Speaker 3: Thing reminds me of.
44:32
Speaker 4: A lot offering his daughters to the men of Sodom.
44:36
Speaker 4: Uh So, yeah, we need to defend. We must defend.
44:42
Speaker 4: And then the last, well, the last thing I'll get
44:45
Speaker 4: into is your chapter on It's called find a Failing failingth.
44:53
Speaker 3: First of all, what is that? What do you mean
44:54
Speaker 3: by that, find a failings?
44:56
Speaker 1: Yeah, you need a group of guys that you can
44:59
Speaker 1: have loyalty and competition among, where you have brotherhood. So
45:04
Speaker 1: I'm pulling from you know, ancient Greek army formations, where
45:08
Speaker 1: a group of guys have their shields up together, they're
45:11
Speaker 1: ready to go. They know what their mission is, what
45:14
Speaker 1: they're trying to accomplish. And I think a lot of
45:16
Speaker 1: guys are listless today, lacking purpose, direction and meaning in
45:20
Speaker 1: life because they don't since they have brotherhood with other men.
45:23
Speaker 1: They don't sense a great deal of loyalty. They don't
45:25
Speaker 1: even know how they stack up against other guys. They're
45:27
Speaker 1: scared to do it, They're scared of rejection, scared to
45:30
Speaker 1: be improven, incompetent, whatever may be. And I'm saying, look
45:34
Speaker 1: for Christian guys particularly, they need other guys that whether
45:37
Speaker 1: it's you know, working on a car, going on a
45:41
Speaker 1: bike ride, going on a hike that nobody's ever been on,
45:44
Speaker 1: exploring God's creation, starting a business, running for office, whatever
45:48
Speaker 1: it is, tackle a project together with other guys in
45:51
Speaker 1: form of failings. Find a group of guys where loyalty
45:54
Speaker 1: is a virtue, where we display loyalty to one another.
45:57
Speaker 1: That doesn't mean we're deferential to a point if we're
46:00
Speaker 1: not able to tease or do what guys do, joke
46:03
Speaker 1: and that kind of thing. But we have guys that
46:05
Speaker 1: have our backs, that can encourage us, that can help
46:09
Speaker 1: convict us, that can shape us, inform us. And the
46:13
Speaker 1: kind of myth that a lot of American men believe,
46:16
Speaker 1: Christian men particularly is that we're kind of islands and
46:19
Speaker 1: that's by design. And we love in the West individualism.
46:23
Speaker 1: I love individualism, that's a very important principle. And yet
46:27
Speaker 1: we don't want kind of this utter individualism where you're alone,
46:30
Speaker 1: where you have no one else. And a lot of
46:33
Speaker 1: young men today they've moved a far away from family,
46:36
Speaker 1: they've moved to a different city, they don't really know
46:38
Speaker 1: where they fit in, and they're just trying to make
46:40
Speaker 1: something of themselves. And I'm like, you need to go
46:42
Speaker 1: to church. You need to find other brothers who have
46:44
Speaker 1: your back, who you trust, who can encourage you, and
46:47
Speaker 1: y'all need to work on something together. This typically doesn't
46:50
Speaker 1: happen a lot in churches because churches have a particular
46:53
Speaker 1: duty and job to accomplish. So you can look to
46:58
Speaker 1: church for kind of a friend group for a family.
47:00
Speaker 1: But sometimes when you go to church, because the church
47:04
Speaker 1: itself is feminized, they treat kind of men's studies and
47:08
Speaker 1: other small groups and this kind of thing as kind
47:10
Speaker 1: of a feminist or feminine kind of endeavor. So instead
47:14
Speaker 1: of men finding a FEELINGX, they find kind of a
47:17
Speaker 1: sisterhood of brothers where they're just like hearing each other's stories.
47:21
Speaker 3: How's your heart?
47:22
Speaker 1: How's your heart? And like that's I understand the intent.
47:26
Speaker 1: I don't rebuke men who ask this question of me
47:29
Speaker 1: because I love it.
47:31
Speaker 3: How's your heart? That's a Christian kind of phrase, But
47:36
Speaker 3: I love it.
47:38
Speaker 4: But why can't men and young boys go to the
47:41
Speaker 4: YMCA and the Boy Scouts of America for camaraderie.
47:45
Speaker 1: Yeah, isn't that interesting.
47:48
Speaker 3: I love you to say that.
47:50
Speaker 4: The YMZA, which was founded in eighteen forty four, it's
47:53
Speaker 4: neither men. It's neither male nor Christian anymore. So that
47:58
Speaker 4: doesn't work. The Boy Scouts of America has it's admitting
48:02
Speaker 4: girls now and it changes its name to Scouting America,
48:04
Speaker 4: which is great.
48:07
Speaker 3: So, yeah, there are no safe spaces for men.
48:11
Speaker 1: No where can we just be men. You know, my
48:14
Speaker 1: grandfather was born in nineteen eighteen and he's passed back
48:18
Speaker 1: in two thousand and five, but he lived in a
48:21
Speaker 1: different world where men could get along it whether it
48:24
Speaker 1: was country clubs or wherever it was, where it was
48:27
Speaker 1: just good to be a man. We could hang out
48:29
Speaker 1: with other dudes and it wasn't illegal to do so.
48:31
Speaker 1: You know, now if you hang with other dudes, people
48:32
Speaker 1: will give you a side eye, like what are those
48:34
Speaker 1: guys doing? They must be up to bad things, And
48:36
Speaker 1: it's like no, this is just like a normal part
48:38
Speaker 1: of life that guys want spaces where they can be men.
48:42
Speaker 1: And we don't want to give into kind of this
48:44
Speaker 1: idea that we've got to kind of carve out a
48:46
Speaker 1: man cave for ourselves or something like this, like, no,
48:49
Speaker 1: we want to assert ourselves, we have opinions, we want
48:52
Speaker 1: to form spaces. It's gonna be you have to be
48:54
Speaker 1: creative in our day because so many laws have been
48:58
Speaker 1: put in place to prohibit this kind of activity, like
49:01
Speaker 1: a male only Jim. I think this would be a
49:03
Speaker 1: wonderful thing for any Christian men, particularly to avoid any
49:07
Speaker 1: kind of temptation or music or anything that kind of
49:11
Speaker 1: gets in the way of their quest to get fit.
49:15
Speaker 1: But if you were to open a gym that was
49:17
Speaker 1: men only, you would quickly find yourself in a lawsuit
49:20
Speaker 1: because that's illegal. So you've got to come up with
49:22
Speaker 1: creative ways to address these issues. But we need men
49:25
Speaker 1: to think creatively in our da to help other guys
49:28
Speaker 1: find a failings.
49:30
Speaker 4: Yes, okay, we'll leave it there for now. The book
49:33
Speaker 4: is Offensive Christianity Restoring the Strength of Men in a
49:38
Speaker 4: Feminized Age by.
49:40
Speaker 3: Jay Chase Davis. We'll put the link below. Chase, thank
49:43
Speaker 3: you for coming on. I appreciate it.
49:45
Speaker 1: Thanks so much for me all man, glad to be here.
49:47
Speaker 3: Wait, don't touch that dial.
49:48
Speaker 4: Please like and subscribe, and also please consider becoming a
49:51
Speaker 4: patron on Patreon for as little as five dollars a month,
49:55
Speaker 4: you can really help us out on the show. The
49:58
Speaker 4: link is below and we so so appreciated.
50:01
Speaker 3: Thank you.
50:04
Speaker 2: Thank you for listening to this episode of The Beckett
50:07
Speaker 2: Cook Show. Your support makes this content possible. All episodes
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50:16
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50:19
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50:23
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50:25
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