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Patterns Over Principles: A New Framework for Biblical Manhood · 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 to get my doctor Shiesh Pharma, and we're going
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Speaker 1: to be discussing or continuing our discussion about Biblical manhood,
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Speaker 1: Biblical masculinity and really the way I would phrase it
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Speaker 1: is the way to be a male disciple of Jesus Christ.
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Speaker 1: And today we're going to be looking at the work
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Speaker 1: or one work of a gentleman named Dale Partridge. Now
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Speaker 1: I don't know that Dale Partridge is overly influential in
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Speaker 1: this whole conversation, but the reason I wanted to address
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Speaker 1: his work is because I think it illustrates a trend
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Speaker 1: that I've seen in a lot of different work on
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Speaker 1: masculinity and maybe multiple trends, but the one that I
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Speaker 1: noticed when I first read his work was he's trying
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Speaker 1: to frame Jesus as the ultimate male, and in doing so,
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Speaker 1: he's reading back masculine character categories onto Jesus and I
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Speaker 1: think creating a problem that he maybe doesn't even realize
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Speaker 1: he's creating, which is, if male and female Christians are
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Speaker 1: all to conform to the image of Christ and Christ
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Speaker 1: is uber masculine, it seems to me that you have
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Speaker 1: to do one of two things. You either have to
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Speaker 1: be able to distinguish between what is faithful, humanly faithful
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Speaker 1: in Jesus and what is masculine, so that women emulate
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Speaker 1: the faithfully human part of Jesus but not necessarily the
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Speaker 1: masculine aspects of Jesus. Or you have to shoot for androgyny,
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Speaker 1: meaning that as women conform to the image of Christ,
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Speaker 1: they are going to become more and more masculine. Now,
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Speaker 1: in the context of his work, it's clear that he
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Speaker 1: does not want the latter. It's also clear that he
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Speaker 1: can't do the former, that there's no chance that you're
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Speaker 1: ever going to get the separation between. Okay, this is
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Speaker 1: where Jesus is being manly or masculine, and this is
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Speaker 1: where he's being faithful, and so to me, these alternatives
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Speaker 1: are there's a through line of those two problems in
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Speaker 1: almost every book on masculinity that tries to do this
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Speaker 1: with Jesus, tries to do it with other biblical characters.
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Speaker 1: And we'll see some of that as we go through
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Speaker 1: his work. So I'm just going to read a passage
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Speaker 1: and then Ashishua will kind of dive in and start
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Speaker 1: talking about this. I know there's a lot of points
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Speaker 1: to raise here, so we'll just jump right into it.
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Speaker 1: Here's a passage from one of his articles. Will link
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Speaker 1: this in the show description. I'd encourage you to take
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Speaker 1: a look at it. This is what he says. Quote,
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Speaker 1: Jesus was a man conceived by a virgin, born, biologically male,
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Speaker 1: raised by a carpenter, a boy wise beyond his years,
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Speaker 1: fully divine, and potently masculine. In fact, if you hate masculinity,
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Speaker 1: you will despise the biblical Jesus. He wasn't interested in
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Speaker 1: getting to know his feminine side, nor was he the
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Speaker 1: macho and chauvinistic domineer that some failing men have become
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Speaker 1: Jesus was the epitome of manhood, a stalwart in mission, bold,
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Speaker 1: obedient to the point of death, fearless in his proclamation
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Speaker 1: of truth, sacrificial in his acts of love, and resolved
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Speaker 1: to do his father's will. Jesus had forced authority and
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Speaker 1: control in a way that marked him as virile and robust.
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Speaker 1: So I'll just start out and say a couple of
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Speaker 1: things about this Number One. When I read this, I
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Speaker 1: thought to myself, how is it that being stalwart and
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Speaker 1: mission bold, obedient to point of death, fearless in his
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Speaker 1: proclamation of the truth, sacrificial in his acts of love,
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Speaker 1: and resolved to do his father's will. How are any
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Speaker 1: of those related to simply being a man? Because when
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Speaker 1: I read that list, I would want my daughters, for instance,
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Speaker 1: my wife, women in the church to exhibit those exact
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Speaker 1: same characteristics, Like we don't want our we don't want
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Speaker 1: female Christians not to be stalwart and mission bold, obedient
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Speaker 1: to the point of death, fearless in the proclamation of
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Speaker 1: the truth, sacrificial, an actor at acts of love, and
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Speaker 1: unresolved to be to do the father's will. Right. So,
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Speaker 1: I think there's a real dichotomy here that he's setting up.
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Speaker 1: He's highlighting these things that and labeling them as characteristics
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Speaker 1: of manhood when they're really probably not that associated with
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Speaker 1: Jesus's maleness, right with Jesus's sex.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, to be clear, none of those things that he
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Speaker 2: mentions are things I want to argue against, right, yeah,
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Speaker 2: men should be those things. Now what he means by
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Speaker 2: those I don't follow that train. Yeah, but I also
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Speaker 2: with you want to say, just people should be those things.
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Speaker 2: This is the life of receiving oneself from another. Yes,
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Speaker 2: nothing about that is this is an undefined phrase, but
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Speaker 2: probably my favorite undefined phrase just because of how cartoonish
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Speaker 2: it sounds. Potently masculine. Yes, I'm not sure what potently
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Speaker 2: masculine is as opposed to just masculine, but none of
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Speaker 2: them seem definitively potent other than maybe you want to
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Speaker 2: say potently human. To your point, yeah, And as he
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Speaker 2: begins to impact those and we can get into some
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Speaker 2: of the details of it, it's it's like he makes
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Speaker 2: the mistake of because Jesus came in the form of
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Speaker 2: a man, therefore what he does is a is a
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Speaker 2: model for being distinctly a man. Yes, and to a
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Speaker 2: point that you've made repeatedly, if he has done that,
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Speaker 2: and if that's what Jesus is doing, right, we think
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Speaker 2: of Paul saying imitate me as I imitate Christ. Okay,
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Speaker 2: Paul was a man as well, So is he talking
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Speaker 2: only to men as well? What does that mean for
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Speaker 2: women in the church? What is what's being commended to
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Speaker 2: not just necessarily the church, but women in general. Nothing
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Speaker 2: is being commended to.
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Speaker 1: Them, apparently.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm not sure what to make of that, right,
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Speaker 2: I think his leap is unjustified. There's nothing in the
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Speaker 2: text that justifies reading it in such a narrow gendered way.
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Speaker 2: There's nothing in the text that leads me to believe
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Speaker 2: that because the person in question is in fact a male,
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Speaker 2: therefore what follows is distinctly applicable only to males. Right,
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Speaker 2: that's a leap, But the implication is even worse, and
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Speaker 2: that then there is therefore no.
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Speaker 1: Model for women.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, and I'm not sure that you know, just to
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Speaker 2: extend what Paul saying that when he says imitate me
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Speaker 2: is immitate Christ. It's not clear to me at all
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Speaker 2: that that's it. That's an admonition towards men only.
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Speaker 1: No one, I mean you could walk through, you could
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Speaker 1: walk through the Book of a Philippians. Right, A paphroditis
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Speaker 1: set up as a model, you know, gesturing toward this
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Speaker 1: sort of self sacrifice that Christ does that we see
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Speaker 1: in the in the Philippians two one through eleven, Right,
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Speaker 1: Paphrodite is Timothy Paul himself. These are all models of
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Speaker 1: the sort of self sacrifice that Jesus is demonstrating in Philippians,
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Speaker 1: and Paul is giving these examples almost building up to
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Speaker 1: that they're all men. I don't think that's on purpose.
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Speaker 1: I think it's coincidental. I think what Paul is saying is,
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Speaker 1: look at this sort of self sacrifice, and this is
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Speaker 1: where I've seen this thus far, and they happen to
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Speaker 1: be men. I don't think it's limited to males. And
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Speaker 1: what I would say, just to make clear sort of
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Speaker 1: my position on this, I don't have a problem with
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Speaker 1: someone saying there are many things that male Christians could
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Speaker 1: learn from the life of Jesus that would be specifically
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Speaker 1: applicable to male disciples. I think because men and women
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Speaker 1: embody the world differently, because we interact with social structures differently,
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Speaker 1: because they're a whole slew of things that you know,
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Speaker 1: our existence as men differ from the existence of women.
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Speaker 1: I think there are unique things that we can learn
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Speaker 1: different ways of our embodying, things like being stalwart and
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Speaker 1: mission or obeying the father's will or what have you.
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Speaker 1: There is a differentiation there. My problem is that he
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Speaker 1: isn't exactly doing that. He's saying that because Jesus is male,
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Speaker 1: he is now the picture of manhood, and all of
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Speaker 1: these things, these good things that Jesus does, are affiliated
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Speaker 1: with manhood. And I want to reverse that and say, no,
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Speaker 1: Jesus does a lot of good things as a human
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Speaker 1: and as males and females. We now need to learn
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Speaker 1: from those as we seek to sit under the authority
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Speaker 1: of Christ as his disciples. And so that may end
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Speaker 1: up looking a little different for men and women, but
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Speaker 1: it isn't because Jesus was male.
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Speaker 2: Right to your point of the list that Paul gave
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Speaker 2: that happened to include just a group of men, Yeah,
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Speaker 2: I mean that there's more to be said there. I think, right,
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Speaker 2: we're talking about a culture that it's been pretty well researched.
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Speaker 2: Did happen to have a distinct understanding of what kind
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Speaker 2: of mobility was possible?
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Speaker 1: Right?
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Speaker 2: Like physical geographic mobility, and generally speaking, men had that
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Speaker 2: opportunity in a way that women didn't. But nothing within
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Speaker 2: what Paul said is assuming that Paul affirms that kind
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Speaker 2: of organization, no right. In fact, as we've talked about before,
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Speaker 2: if Paul exists as someone with no ability whatsoever to
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Speaker 2: change the social order, and no ability whatsoever to exercise
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Speaker 2: any sort of political instrumentality for a new kind of society,
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Speaker 2: then all he has is his disposal is to take
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Speaker 2: what is already existent, which is a world in which
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Speaker 2: there is a greater geographic mobility possible for men, and
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Speaker 2: then employee loosely speaking, right more in a disciple forum,
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Speaker 2: not in an employer employees sort of sort of a way,
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Speaker 2: but to employ these men that have the opportunity to
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Speaker 2: continue in the sort of ministry that he's talking about. Right,
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Speaker 2: But that doesn't mean that in other places, think for instance,
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Speaker 2: the Book of Colossians, that he's not also commending women
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Speaker 2: who are deeply important within the functioning and establishment of
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Speaker 2: a church. Additionally, I think it's worth noting an important
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Speaker 2: feminist critique of that sort of thinking that Partridge is giving.
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Speaker 2: And I realize that for some people the moment you
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Speaker 2: hear the adjective feminist, to the critique, it's liberal, throw
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Speaker 2: it away, and I'd like to encourage holding off on
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Speaker 2: those sorts of prior judgments and to hear it through.
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Speaker 2: But the feminist critique is, oftentimes we see this sort
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Speaker 2: of language of a commendation of humility that seems to
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Speaker 2: be distinctly driven towards men, because we live in societies historically,
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Speaker 2: almost universally, where men are the ones in positions of
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Speaker 2: power or control or dominion, and women have already, by
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Speaker 2: social expectation and formation, been put into a submissive, servile mode.
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Speaker 2: So that then when we say a counterbalance to that
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Speaker 2: is be humble, it's not really directed at those who
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Speaker 2: don't even have the opportunity to exercise the kind of
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Speaker 2: individual and social power to have to be told be humble. Right,
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Speaker 2: And so what feminist scholars will often point out is
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Speaker 2: then that notions like be humble directed towards a woman
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Speaker 2: register in a very different way. In fact, probably often
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Speaker 2: aren't precisely applicable the way that we think about it
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Speaker 2: when we say men, be humble. Now, why this is important,
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Speaker 2: I think it is fairly simple, and I'll use my
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Speaker 2: kids as an example. You know, every so often, as
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Speaker 2: most parents have to do, you have to refresh house rules.
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Speaker 2: And one of the rules that I find myself having
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Speaker 2: to refresh is we're going to listen and obey right away.
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Speaker 2: That's an important tagline right away. And when I say that,
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Speaker 2: I'm almost always looking at my oldest son. Now I
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Speaker 2: have four kids. Yeah, it's not as though I'm not
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Speaker 2: wanting that to be applicable to the other three kids, right,
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Speaker 2: But everyone in the room knows why I'm looking at
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Speaker 2: my oldest son when I say that. The other three
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Speaker 2: just don't have the same struggle with that rite away
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Speaker 2: piece versus my oldest son, who's more inclined to say, oh,
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Speaker 2: I'm happy to listen, but these ten things first. Yeah, No,
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Speaker 2: it's time for dinner. Get to your seat. Anything else
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Speaker 2: you have to offer once we start eating, you can
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Speaker 2: say it right. The others seem to get that.
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Speaker 1: A little bit better.
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Speaker 2: That doesn't mean that it's a rule only for the
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Speaker 2: one right. So the parallel here is that with the
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Speaker 2: feminist critique, with the way that or against the way
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Speaker 2: that Partridge is reading, he seems to kind of miss
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Speaker 2: the ups and downs or the valleys that go with audience.
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Speaker 2: Even if we were to grant him, which I'm not
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Speaker 2: sure that we can, Even if we were to grant
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Speaker 2: him the sort of gender distinction and who these statements
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Speaker 2: are being made towards. There are social patterns at work
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Speaker 2: and historic familial environments at work that mean that sometimes
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Speaker 2: you do have to say listen and obey right away
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Speaker 2: and direct it more specifically at one person or one
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Speaker 2: group of people, even if you mean that for everybody.
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Speaker 2: And I think that's kind of what's at stake with
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Speaker 2: the feminist It's not that the feminist scholars saying the
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Speaker 2: kind of virtues that are at play with you. For
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Speaker 2: some feminists would say let's do away with humility as
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Speaker 2: a virtue. That's a longer conversation. But the core, I
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Speaker 2: think at players, the sorts of things we're trying to
15:24
Speaker 2: get at are missed. If we're saying, if we're if
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Speaker 2: if we're saying that these things belong to a woman's
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Speaker 2: place already, then to direct that commendation towards a woman
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Speaker 2: misses the larger social pattern understood. Yeah, right, So I
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Speaker 2: think that's a kind of texture that Partridge would benefit from.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, he would benefit from a lot of different texture.
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Speaker 1: I think it's I think one of the more is
15:55
Speaker 1: satisfying aspects. And I did read his book. So we're
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Speaker 1: referencing an article just because it's a little easier on
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Speaker 1: the podcast. But I did read his book. There isn't
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Speaker 1: a lot more argumentation there that I would find compelling
16:08
Speaker 1: in his book than I find in his article. I
16:11
Speaker 1: think what we see is that there's this constant sort
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Speaker 1: of assumption of what masculinity is, and then a reading
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Speaker 1: back out of the Biblical narratives and finding masculinity in
16:21
Speaker 1: various places, but then really missing what you would call texture. Right,
16:27
Speaker 1: so you have I'll give it. For instance, in his article,
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Speaker 1: he talks about this idea that the newly created atom
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Speaker 1: was sexually male but intrinsically how's the qualities of man
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Speaker 1: and woman? That is nowhere in the Biblical narrative, you know.
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Speaker 1: I mean, if you think about how many lines there
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Speaker 1: are in Genesis even describing this man, right, you have
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Speaker 1: maybe three verses, none of which really deal with any
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Speaker 1: sort of characteristics of Adam. Adam is a fairly flat character,
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Speaker 1: quite frankly, the entire time he's on the scene. The
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Speaker 1: only time we actually see him respond to something is
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Speaker 1: when the woman is made. And I think that it's
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Speaker 1: those kind of assertions that he's drawing on that start
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Speaker 1: to border on their ridiculous that they are just so
17:39
Speaker 1: far out there and evidently used to advance his particular
17:46
Speaker 1: argument with no particular substance behind them, Right, That is
17:51
Speaker 1: really deeply problematic of what he's doing. Now, we've said
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Speaker 1: before interpretation is difficult, and there are possibilities for interpretation.
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Speaker 1: Then there are probabilities for interpretation, and there's a range
18:07
Speaker 1: of things that could be right, some that might be right,
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Speaker 1: and some that seem more likely than others to be right.
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Speaker 1: And then there's fantasy. Then there's just total conjecture. And
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Speaker 1: I think this is total conjecture. This notion that the
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Speaker 1: man prior to the creation of woman housed all the
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Speaker 1: qualities of male and female makes absolutely no sense for
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Speaker 1: one and it has no biblical basis for it. I mean,
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Speaker 1: the whole reason for creating moment is because it wasn't
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Speaker 1: good for man to be alone.
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Speaker 2: Right, That's a key point to bring up here. Right,
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Speaker 2: if all of the qualities of male and female are
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Speaker 2: within atom, arguably, what we're putting into the text is
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Speaker 2: this notion of self sufficiency. But the whole thrust of
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Speaker 2: Genesis two that leads us to that kind of climax
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Speaker 2: of God putting out him to sleep and drawing forth
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Speaker 2: the woman. Yeah, is a move against self sufficiency. It's
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Speaker 2: not good for him to be alone, that's right, and
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Speaker 2: for him to see that. One of the things he
19:15
Speaker 2: does is he names animals and notices by the way
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Speaker 2: that the animals are not alone. It's showing a sort
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Speaker 2: of neediness. It's showing something that's missing from him, not
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Speaker 2: in a sinful way, but in a sense of what
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Speaker 2: truly is full and complete is the being in and
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Speaker 2: with and for another, but also receiving oneself from another.
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Speaker 2: And that I think just the logic of that passage.
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Speaker 2: Again talking about probabilities of interpretation, but the logic of
19:45
Speaker 2: that passage flies in the face of all of these
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Speaker 2: things are present in atom No. Actually, that's the opposite
19:52
Speaker 2: of the implication and the fall. In Genesis three, it's
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Speaker 2: worth noting that we've talked about in another series is
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Speaker 2: a movement towards self sufficiency. Wrongly so right, Neither one
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Speaker 2: of these people, Adam or Eve, is to is to
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Speaker 2: see themselves in a godlike manner, as self sufficient, but
20:15
Speaker 2: both of them ultimately move in such a way as
20:17
Speaker 2: to do that.
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Speaker 1: I will say I also find, in addition to that
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Speaker 1: particular passage where he's making this assertion, I also find
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Speaker 1: all of his biblical evidence related to why Christ is
20:35
Speaker 1: particularly exhibiting the boldness, fearlessness, courage, you know, those kind
20:42
Speaker 1: of things that he lists. He goes through and tries
20:45
Speaker 1: to sort of lay these out, citing various biblical passages
20:48
Speaker 1: for different things to demonstrate Christ's masculinity in these, but
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Speaker 1: there is no reference to masculinity in any of them
21:00
Speaker 1: other than Jesus being male, which again I think there's
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Speaker 1: a collapsing here that we should just name that being
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Speaker 1: male doesn't automatically mean masculine. And that's a real tension here,
21:15
Speaker 1: I think in this piece as well, is that there's
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Speaker 1: a tendency to think that if you're male, you're going
21:21
Speaker 1: to be masculine. That's obviously not the case, given that
21:25
Speaker 1: he talks about the effeminate church, and you know, like
21:29
Speaker 1: there's a way for men to be effeminine, and so
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Speaker 1: you have to import these other categories back in on this,
21:36
Speaker 1: and again we're back at that sort of problem of
21:39
Speaker 1: can you really distinguish when Christ is being faithful as
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Speaker 1: a human that male and female should both emulate in
21:46
Speaker 1: their own unique ways, or is Christ being masculine? In
21:49
Speaker 1: which case, what do you do when you're telling women, hey,
21:53
Speaker 1: emulate Christ? He never deals with that dynamic. And like
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Speaker 1: I said, even the passages that he cites, I don't
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Speaker 1: disagree that they demonstrate Christ's fearlessness or his boldness or
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Speaker 1: his what have you. The tension for me is that
22:09
Speaker 1: they don't point to his masculinity. So I don't know,
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Speaker 1: and any thoughts on.
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Speaker 2: That, Yeah, agreed, He's importing this notion of masculine. And
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Speaker 2: it's important to distinguish here what we're trying to say
22:23
Speaker 2: when we say, quote masculine, masculine is a is a
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Speaker 2: social gender term, right, It has a content of what
22:31
Speaker 2: does it mean to fulfill this? So you can be
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Speaker 2: male but not masculine in so far as whatever it
22:39
Speaker 2: is that entails big masculine, you just don't fulfill. Right.
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Speaker 2: So that's the real question at play here. And not
22:47
Speaker 2: only do we not get a content of what that
22:49
Speaker 2: masculine is and the text, we also don't get any
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Speaker 2: indication that that's even in the framework of the authors
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Speaker 2: of the text. I think it's an important point that
23:03
Speaker 2: you just raised as well, that the New Testament and
23:08
Speaker 2: really the Old Testament both depict the covenant communities that
23:13
Speaker 2: are at play in the position of bride. Yeah, and
23:20
Speaker 2: bride in this case in terms of the church. With
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Speaker 2: the Old Testament, Biblical Israel is made up of men
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Speaker 2: and women. It's made up of old and young, it's
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Speaker 2: made up of middle aged, right, It's a whole spectrum
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Speaker 2: of people. And this is a point that I've tried
23:37
Speaker 2: to make to students, and I find it it really
23:39
Speaker 2: actually gets them to pause and maybe hurts their brain
23:42
Speaker 2: a little bit to think about it. But if we're
23:45
Speaker 2: going to play the game of masculine feminine, if we're
23:47
Speaker 2: going to play that, then we have to consider the
23:51
Speaker 2: strangeness of the call for a body, a covenental body
23:56
Speaker 2: that is made up of men and women, to be
23:58
Speaker 2: identified in the whole as feminine. Yeah right, Yeah, Now,
24:04
Speaker 2: I don't think we should be playing the masculine feminine
24:06
Speaker 2: game and game in quite this way, right, But we
24:10
Speaker 2: should pay attention if we're going.
24:12
Speaker 1: To write, right.
24:14
Speaker 2: But it's worth pointing even if we set aside the
24:16
Speaker 2: masculine feminine game, and we just point out the church
24:20
Speaker 2: is called the bride of Christ even independently of that
24:24
Speaker 2: masculine feminine social sort of circumscribing of roles and formation,
24:32
Speaker 2: men are in fact called to the kind of submissiveness
24:36
Speaker 2: that's often placed socially upon women. From reading the text, right,
24:43
Speaker 2: the larger thrust, so I'll draw from the Theologiannandre Bloche here,
24:48
Speaker 2: the larger thrust of for instance, Ephesians five, which Partridge
24:51
Speaker 2: appeals to where it says, men love your wives as
24:56
Speaker 2: Christ love the Church. Is also to point out that
25:02
Speaker 2: the larger image here is that covenant community of church,
25:06
Speaker 2: because that covenant community of church now places you. Most importantly.
25:10
Speaker 2: He uses the word theodramatically, which just means within the
25:14
Speaker 2: larger forming of the story of God as the bride
25:18
Speaker 2: of Christ. So everything that's given there for the man
25:24
Speaker 2: in that particular setting is meant to be an image
25:27
Speaker 2: of what the man himself is supposed to do before Christ. Yeah,
25:32
Speaker 2: and that's before we even talk about the larger setting
25:35
Speaker 2: of Ephesians five, where Paul first speaks of each of
25:40
Speaker 2: these people, male and female, submitting to one another, right
25:46
Speaker 2: and that's before we consider that in some ways the
25:50
Speaker 2: ask upon men was actually greater than the supposed ask
25:55
Speaker 2: upon women, as submit to your husband's right. Yeah, men
26:00
Speaker 2: are now put in this position of a kind of
26:04
Speaker 2: obedience all the way to the point of the cross.
26:07
Speaker 1: Yes.
26:07
Speaker 2: And by the way, remember ultimately you're part of the bride,
26:11
Speaker 2: which means really this is a picture just of getting
26:13
Speaker 2: to the real issue, which is submit to Christ, who
26:18
Speaker 2: was the one who, as the male already was the
26:19
Speaker 2: one who submitted. Right, He's submitted to the will the Father. Yeah.
26:23
Speaker 1: Yeah, not my will, but yours be done.
26:25
Speaker 2: So through and through on so many levels, this idea
26:30
Speaker 2: of submission and obedience actually doesn't give you a picture
26:35
Speaker 2: of masculine or feminine. It just gives you, as you've said,
26:38
Speaker 2: as we've said, being a human being and actually even
26:42
Speaker 2: giving you an image of the inner life of God's self. Right,
26:47
Speaker 2: the son submits to the will of the Father. The
26:50
Speaker 2: spirit submits as the voice or the breath of God
26:54
Speaker 2: going forth, and even in that moment the Father gives
26:59
Speaker 2: all that the Father has to the sun. Right, Like,
27:02
Speaker 2: there's mutual acts of submission all the place. So to
27:04
Speaker 2: be human and to imitate to imitate policy, imitates Christ.
27:07
Speaker 2: It's just a giant list of whether you're male or female.
27:12
Speaker 2: It's to live for the other and to receive oneself
27:15
Speaker 2: and fullness from the other.
27:19
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think we've just as you say that,
27:23
Speaker 1: there's something about what does it look like for us
27:25
Speaker 1: to be in union with one another, serving one another,
27:29
Speaker 1: mutually submitting to one another. And this is the context
27:32
Speaker 1: of Ephesians five as well, five fifteen through twenty one
27:35
Speaker 1: talk a lot about these things. Somehow we've gotten caught
27:40
Speaker 1: up in the whole who should lead kind of conversation,
27:45
Speaker 1: who's ultimately in charge at this moment? And how do
27:50
Speaker 1: women fit within the overall structures of the church. And
27:54
Speaker 1: I just think that's a It's not an unimportant conversation,
28:00
Speaker 1: right I wouldn't, I wouldn't trivialize it. But what I
28:03
Speaker 1: would say is, I think we've detached it, to coupled
28:07
Speaker 1: it in many ways from this conversation that we're having
28:12
Speaker 1: right now, which is we're all supposed to be a
28:14
Speaker 1: mutual submission to one another. I said this to one
28:17
Speaker 1: of the guests we were talking about. It was Kristo mccurlan.
28:21
Speaker 1: She wrote a book on authority, and we were talking
28:23
Speaker 1: a little bit about it. She was going through First
28:26
Speaker 1: Timothy two and just talking about some of the interpretive
28:29
Speaker 1: challenges there, and she talked about, you know, the why,
28:33
Speaker 1: you know, why wouldn't we follow the clear teaching subscripture
28:35
Speaker 1: kind of thing, And my comment was, you know, it's
28:38
Speaker 1: not unclear, right, A clear passage is Romans twelve ten,
28:44
Speaker 1: outdo one another and showing honor. Right, if we want
28:48
Speaker 1: a clear passage to follow Romans twelve ten is just
28:51
Speaker 1: for me, it's hard to be we are to outdo
28:54
Speaker 1: one another and showing honor. If we start there in
28:58
Speaker 1: our conversations, a lot of these things they may not
29:02
Speaker 1: go away. I don't think the interpretive questions go away,
29:06
Speaker 1: but they're dealt with in a much different manner. If
29:10
Speaker 1: we're trying to out do one another and showing honor,
29:12
Speaker 1: that is not And I honestly I think some people
29:16
Speaker 1: would hear that and they'd be like, oh, that's just
29:17
Speaker 1: you know, that's a feminine idea of some sort. Right,
29:21
Speaker 1: you're just trying to cultivate empathy and compassion and just
29:24
Speaker 1: let people do whatever they want to do. No out
29:27
Speaker 1: doing one another and showing honor doesn't mean that people
29:29
Speaker 1: get to do whatever it is that they want to do.
29:32
Speaker 1: It means that we bear with one another in ways
29:35
Speaker 1: that are leading each other to become more conformed at
29:39
Speaker 1: the image of Christ. And so to me, it's like,
29:43
Speaker 1: if we could focus in on some of those clearer passages,
29:46
Speaker 1: we'd have much less trouble dealing with some of these
29:49
Speaker 1: interpretive issues. Then it seems like we really do. People
29:53
Speaker 1: tend to get mad, they tend to get anxiety about
29:57
Speaker 1: these things. They tend to have frustrations. I mean again
30:00
Speaker 1: sort of at the end of his article here he
30:04
Speaker 1: goes back into the effeminate infiltration of the church as
30:11
Speaker 1: as seemingly the underlying problem for which the masculinity of
30:15
Speaker 1: Jesus is the solution. And I sit back and I
30:19
Speaker 1: say to myself, is the effeminate infiltration of the church
30:24
Speaker 1: really the church's biggest problem? Like it is what we
30:29
Speaker 1: need or manly are men in the church, And then
30:32
Speaker 1: the church's problems would really be solved. You know, I
30:36
Speaker 1: don't have any problems saying, sure, I wish there were
30:39
Speaker 1: more men in the church. I wish there were more
30:41
Speaker 1: godly men in the church. But it's not so that
30:44
Speaker 1: we could solve an effeminate problem, right, don't you just
30:49
Speaker 1: want more folk in the church. On some level, it
30:54
Speaker 1: just feels like we're this has gotten so goofy. And
30:57
Speaker 1: there's one point in this. I'll just read this letter,
31:00
Speaker 1: this little section, because if you just read this part,
31:04
Speaker 1: I think people would actually agree, right like I would
31:09
Speaker 1: agree outside the context of this article, I would agree
31:12
Speaker 1: with this statement. He says, coffee shop and bookstore Christianity
31:16
Speaker 1: is no match for prison cell and angry mob Christianity.
31:20
Speaker 1: The truth is Church history is saturated with Christians being tortured, dismembered,
31:24
Speaker 1: eate and shot, hung racked, box buried, and burned. For
31:28
Speaker 1: Christ might be a little overkilled. The timidity of the
31:31
Speaker 1: current church, which submits to government overreach and complies with
31:34
Speaker 1: laws enforcing unbiblical supportive sexual sin, will be costly. Now
31:41
Speaker 1: I wouldn't phrase it that way, but I get the
31:43
Speaker 1: point right that even if we read through something like
31:48
Speaker 1: the Book of Revelation, the Letters to the Seven Churches,
31:51
Speaker 1: what's being pushed on there is, Hey, Church, don't compromise
31:55
Speaker 1: your faith in the midst of worldly pressures. It's something
31:59
Speaker 1: around them. And so do we need a resilient church
32:03
Speaker 1: that is willing to suffer the consequences of not compromising
32:08
Speaker 1: our faith. Of course we do, right. I think that's
32:11
Speaker 1: an of course. But what I think he's trying to
32:15
Speaker 1: do is say that, of course, yes, we need an
32:19
Speaker 1: uncompromising faith, and to have that, we need more men.
32:23
Speaker 1: That's where I sort of jump off the train. You know,
32:27
Speaker 1: to have an uncompromising faith, we need to be more masculine. Again,
32:30
Speaker 1: That's where I jump off the train. I don't buy
32:33
Speaker 1: that next leap, because I don't see that that is
32:36
Speaker 1: what the Bible is really encouraging us to do and be.
32:40
Speaker 1: The Bible is really encouraging us to be like Christ,
32:44
Speaker 1: not in the manliness sense that he's arguing, but in
32:47
Speaker 1: the faithfulness sense that we see in Christ, that we
32:50
Speaker 1: see in Paul, that we see in the you know,
32:53
Speaker 1: the Hall of Faith in Hebrews eleven, right, all these
32:56
Speaker 1: different places right where these pictures of faithfulness are held
32:59
Speaker 1: out for us, regardless of male and female. That's what
33:02
Speaker 1: is necessary. But I think he's trying to sort of
33:07
Speaker 1: solve a problem it's not actually there. And maybe the
33:12
Speaker 1: better way to say that he's trying to solve a
33:13
Speaker 1: problem that he's uncomfortable with as opposed to solving the
33:17
Speaker 1: problem that we really need to address.
33:22
Speaker 2: Is it fair to say that the problem he sees
33:24
Speaker 2: is really a political issue, and let me set up
33:29
Speaker 2: why I'm asking it that way. Yeah, he sets it
33:32
Speaker 2: up as an issue of masculinity. I can think back
33:38
Speaker 2: twenty five years ago as as a teenager going to church,
33:45
Speaker 2: not from a church tome, but having gone to church
33:48
Speaker 2: and it was Father's Day and hearing basically the same
33:52
Speaker 2: message about the need for men to be men, and
33:55
Speaker 2: books being passed out that I think I still have
33:57
Speaker 2: somewhere buried that was on a very cringeable book. To me,
34:03
Speaker 2: I won't mention the name, not worth it.
34:07
Speaker 1: But it's a.
34:08
Speaker 2: Call that I've been hearing for a long time. As
34:10
Speaker 2: I've studied, I've seen this call really dates back to
34:13
Speaker 2: well before my lifetime. It's a pretty common call with
34:18
Speaker 2: an American Christianity for men to be men in the church,
34:22
Speaker 2: to be church the church. That the world is being
34:25
Speaker 2: effeminized and the church is being effeminized with it. I
34:28
Speaker 2: look around and I don't see that, to be honest.
34:32
Speaker 2: I look at what the biggest earners at the box
34:34
Speaker 2: office have been over the last decade decade and a half,
34:39
Speaker 2: and they're superhero movies that emphasize a particular image, specifically
34:44
Speaker 2: of the men. Right for every Wonder Woman in Black
34:48
Speaker 2: Widow that you have out there, there's at least ten
34:51
Speaker 2: Superman's and Doors and Iron Men and Batman that are
34:54
Speaker 2: bulging muscles. I think back to the late eighties when
35:01
Speaker 2: when the modern superhero genre in film form was when
35:05
Speaker 2: it began, and it began with that Michael Keaton Batman
35:08
Speaker 2: movie and the great, the great criticism was, I don't
35:11
Speaker 2: think Michael Keaton can be Batman. He's too small. He
35:13
Speaker 2: does he's he's short, and he's not muscular, right, Yeah,
35:20
Speaker 2: I look at the comic book world that that that
35:22
Speaker 2: came out of, I mean, unrealistic muscles bulging out of
35:25
Speaker 2: these very manly men. I look about look at the
35:29
Speaker 2: film industry that preceded the rise of the comic book
35:33
Speaker 2: movie as the as the Supreme, and it's the Arnold
35:37
Speaker 2: Schwarzenegger Sylvester Stallone archetype.
35:41
Speaker 1: Yeah.
35:42
Speaker 2: Before that, it was the the Western and the spaghetti
35:46
Speaker 2: Western with Clint Eastwood. If anything, the image of the
35:54
Speaker 2: man has become more ripped and more exaggeratedly masculine. You
35:59
Speaker 2: look around at you know, clothing and cologne and shaving commercials,
36:05
Speaker 2: and like, yeah, that's an image of men.
36:09
Speaker 1: That it's very muscular, right, right, right.
36:13
Speaker 2: And then when I look within the church and I
36:14
Speaker 2: see that this, this phenomenon of men be men predates
36:21
Speaker 2: my lifetime, it's not clear to me what it is
36:27
Speaker 2: that he sees going on that he's harping against, until
36:32
Speaker 2: I say, oh, I think this is politically motivated. I
36:37
Speaker 2: think there's a particular desire to have a particular ordering
36:42
Speaker 2: or control or center of locus for the country or
36:45
Speaker 2: for culture or civilization or however he wants to put it.
36:48
Speaker 2: And that image seems to be driving him. Because the
36:51
Speaker 2: sorts of markers he's pointing to culturally and within the church,
36:54
Speaker 2: I just don't see that as existing.
36:58
Speaker 1: I mean, I think it's interesting that he referenced is
37:00
Speaker 1: the government overreach and complies with laws enforcing unbiblical support
37:06
Speaker 1: of sexual sin. Now the government overreach. He's writing this
37:09
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty two, so sort of post COVID and
37:13
Speaker 1: a closeure church. You can't gather those kind of things right,
37:17
Speaker 1: which I know is contentious in the Christian community. I
37:21
Speaker 1: went to a church that didn't meet physically and we
37:24
Speaker 1: did just fine. I think that there needed to be
37:28
Speaker 1: much more grace and sort of a Romans fourteen fifteen
37:32
Speaker 1: attitude about how church is dealt with that. But it
37:36
Speaker 1: turned into a point of machismo. And so I can
37:39
Speaker 1: totally see your point here where there are these political
37:44
Speaker 1: arrangements that I think are difficult. The only place I
37:47
Speaker 1: would expand that sort of political notion is that I
37:50
Speaker 1: would say it's not political necessarily on the American stage,
37:53
Speaker 1: but I think it's also political within the church. And
37:56
Speaker 1: maybe that's what you mean too, in the sense that
37:59
Speaker 1: you know there you know, I, yeah, maybe there are
38:06
Speaker 1: more women in the church than men. That's a point
38:08
Speaker 1: that he raises in the article, and I didn't look
38:10
Speaker 1: at that research. I didn't I didn't check that out.
38:15
Speaker 1: My recollection of the last time I looked at it
38:17
Speaker 1: is that there are more women than men in the church.
38:22
Speaker 1: But if you look at the leadership of churches, I'm
38:25
Speaker 1: going to go ahead and bet that there are more
38:28
Speaker 1: men involved in leadership at churches than there are women.
38:33
Speaker 1: That the number of women lead pastors is a fraction.
38:36
Speaker 1: It's almost like the superhero movies. Right, You've got Black
38:39
Speaker 1: Widow and Wonder Women, and then the rest are males,
38:44
Speaker 1: you know. And so I think that what we have
38:46
Speaker 1: is largely that in churches, and that would extend down
38:50
Speaker 1: into more of the invisible leadership structures of the elder boards, right,
38:55
Speaker 1: and a lot of that's driven by the complementaryan perspectives
38:58
Speaker 1: and those kind of things. And so it's just difficult
39:01
Speaker 1: for me to understand why he thinks this is such
39:05
Speaker 1: a problem, given that if you look across the last
39:10
Speaker 1: fifty one hundred years, probably the entire history of America,
39:15
Speaker 1: you've had men leading churches the entire time. You've had
39:20
Speaker 1: men leading denominations the entire time. Like, I'm not sure
39:25
Speaker 1: this is a woman problem and a feminization problem so
39:31
Speaker 1: much as it is a the church does not have
39:35
Speaker 1: I would say a masculine feminine problem, Like we don't
39:38
Speaker 1: have a bad mix of that. What we have is
39:40
Speaker 1: we have compromise, we have disagreement, we have lack of formation. However,
39:45
Speaker 1: you want to say that we have a discipleship problem,
39:48
Speaker 1: and we don't. We have a compromise problem. That's sort
39:55
Speaker 1: of the way I would diagnose it. And so all
39:58
Speaker 1: of this that he's frustrated with. With regard to, you know,
40:02
Speaker 1: the effeminization of the church, I tend to agree with you.
40:05
Speaker 1: I don't see it. What I think I resonate with
40:09
Speaker 1: is the notion of timidity. I can get my head
40:11
Speaker 1: around that one, right, that the church may be too timid,
40:16
Speaker 1: may be too willing to compromise in order to be
40:20
Speaker 1: more comfortable. I could see that one. But I don't
40:24
Speaker 1: see that as an effeminate characteristic. I just see it
40:28
Speaker 1: as unfaithfulness.
40:30
Speaker 2: Agreed. Yeah, that's a being formed into the image of
40:33
Speaker 2: Christ issue issue. It's a eating from the tree of
40:38
Speaker 2: self sufficiency, the knowledge of good and evil issue. Right.
40:41
Speaker 2: It's which is, by the way, not a male female issue.
40:45
Speaker 2: Both did it, It's not. It's not clear to me
40:50
Speaker 2: that it's a masculine feminine issue, and it's worth noting
40:54
Speaker 2: as a footnote anyway that I think far more men
40:59
Speaker 2: have left the church because they don't live into these
41:03
Speaker 2: masculine ideals and they don't find a place for themselves
41:06
Speaker 2: in the church then have left the church because the
41:11
Speaker 2: church has mauve walls whatever mav is. As Driscoll said, yeah, yeah, yeah,
41:19
Speaker 2: forgive me everyone out there. I don't know what MAV is.
41:22
Speaker 1: I will just say sort of as we close this up,
41:25
Speaker 1: I think the diagnosis is really an issue, right, I mean,
41:29
Speaker 1: we've made sort of a big deal about this and
41:32
Speaker 1: the mischaracterization I think of faithfulness for masculinity, this sort
41:36
Speaker 1: of merger of Jesus being male. So then Jesus is
41:40
Speaker 1: ultimately the ultimately masculine and we have lessons that we
41:45
Speaker 1: can learn as men from Jesus being masculine that will
41:48
Speaker 1: help us retake and reclaim a church that has become feminized.
41:54
Speaker 1: I think that entire diagnosis and the entire narrative is
41:57
Speaker 1: distorting because, in part if you really take a second
42:02
Speaker 1: and think about it, what's on top of all of that,
42:07
Speaker 1: what's really driving this whole project forward? It isn't Christ,
42:13
Speaker 1: It's masculinity. And it's a particular notion of masculinity. Right. Yes,
42:21
Speaker 1: they've merged that with Jesus be masculine, like Christ was masculine.
42:25
Speaker 1: Well what did it mean to be that Christ is masculine? Well,
42:28
Speaker 1: let me show you. And then it goes into this
42:30
Speaker 1: sort of spiral of well he was this, and he
42:32
Speaker 1: was this, and he was this. I mean, even the
42:34
Speaker 1: reference of Jesus was a carpenter. Okay, but I'm going
42:39
Speaker 1: to go ahead and bet that the women of that
42:41
Speaker 1: day and age were pretty hands on, rougher and tougher
42:47
Speaker 1: women than what any of us are today. Right, unless
42:52
Speaker 1: you're sort of a blue collar worker who works with
42:56
Speaker 1: his hands, works with her hands every day, if you're
43:00
Speaker 1: an office worker or white collar kind of person, it's
43:03
Speaker 1: almost a guarantee that these people had a rougher life
43:05
Speaker 1: than you have, right, And so even that reference, you
43:11
Speaker 1: kind of sit back and you're like, well, of course
43:12
Speaker 1: Jesus would have worked with his hands probably. I mean,
43:15
Speaker 1: we have reference to him being a tecton, and so
43:17
Speaker 1: he was a builder of some sort that wasn't manly,
43:22
Speaker 1: right in a masculine sense. It was probably a male
43:25
Speaker 1: dominated procession, But that didn't make it masculine, just meant
43:30
Speaker 1: that that's what men did in that day. And so
43:32
Speaker 1: I think we've got to leave room for I guess
43:36
Speaker 1: my bigger point is when we start applying this layer
43:39
Speaker 1: of masculinity over the top of Jesus, that's really what
43:42
Speaker 1: we're doing. We're putting it over the top of Jesus,
43:47
Speaker 1: and as Christians, we should be really uncomfortable with that
43:52
Speaker 1: that all of a sudden, some other standard other than
43:55
Speaker 1: Christ is driving the way we think about Jesus. That's
44:01
Speaker 1: that to me, is the biggest problem with this sort
44:03
Speaker 1: of line of thought is that it sets up masculinity
44:07
Speaker 1: as a standard outside of and separate from discipleship for
44:14
Speaker 1: men in the church to live up to. And so
44:17
Speaker 1: I think his diagnosis of the problem and the solution
44:19
Speaker 1: he suggests is only going to lead the church down
44:22
Speaker 1: darker roads, not necessarily better roads. Agreed, All right, Well
44:33
Speaker 1: let's leave it there. This was a discussion. Like I
44:36
Speaker 1: said of Dale Partridge's article, Again, we're not trying to
44:40
Speaker 1: pick on these folks, but they do offer helpful examples
44:44
Speaker 1: of the way that these things can be misread. And
44:48
Speaker 1: so we'll link the article in the show notes, encourage
44:51
Speaker 1: you to take a look at it, and as you do,
44:54
Speaker 1: just really read it with a critical I saying, does
44:59
Speaker 1: anything he's saying necessarily relate to masculinity? And if you
45:05
Speaker 1: had to after you read the article, could you actually
45:08
Speaker 1: describe what masculinity is? And I think you'll you know,
45:13
Speaker 1: people who read this honestly will have to say no
45:15
Speaker 1: to both like they won't be able to construct masculinity.
45:19
Speaker 1: They won't know exactly what masculinity is. And most of
45:22
Speaker 1: the passages he addresses certainly could be applied to women
45:30
Speaker 1: or men, they aren't specifically masculine. And so he's one
45:36
Speaker 1: of the gentlemen that does this. I think there are others,
45:39
Speaker 1: and so this is something I would say we need
45:42
Speaker 1: to watch out for, not only in masculinity feminine conversations,
45:45
Speaker 1: but probably in a whole host of other areas as well. Anyway,
45:51
Speaker 1: thanks Ashish for being here, thanks for this conversation, and
45:54
Speaker 1: thanks everybody for listening. We'll catch on the next episode
45:57
Speaker 1: of thinky Christian. I just want to take a second
45:59
Speaker 1: to think the team at Life Audio for their partnership
46:02
Speaker 1: with us on the Thinking Christian podcast. If you go
46:04
Speaker 1: to lifeaudio dot com, you'll find dozens of other faith
46:07
Speaker 1: centered podcasts in their network. They've got shows about prayer,
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Speaker 1: Bible study, parenting, and more.