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Discipleship, Not Dominance: Rethinking Biblical Masculinity (Kutter Callaway) · 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. Through calm, thoughtful theological discussions, Thinking
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Speaker 1: Christian highlights the ways God is working in the world
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Speaker 1: and questions the underlying social, cultural, and political assumptions that
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Speaker 1: hinder Christians from becoming more like Christ. Now on to
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Speaker 1: today's episode of Thinking Christian.
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Speaker 2: Hey, everyone, welcome.
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Speaker 1: To this episode of Thinking Christian on Doctor James Spencer
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Speaker 1: and I am joined today by doctor Cutter Calloway. He
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Speaker 1: is an associate professor of theology and an associate professor
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Speaker 1: of Psychology at Fuller Seminary. Sritten a number of different books,
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Speaker 1: most recent one, i think, is Theology for Psychology and Counseling.
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Speaker 1: And he's also authored a new or really just started
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Speaker 1: a new substack called The Wrong Kind of Christian. And
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Speaker 1: that's how we kind of connected. And so today we're
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Speaker 1: going to be talking a little bit about what he
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Speaker 1: wrote about in his initial post on the Wrong Kind
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Speaker 1: of Christian and probably a few other things.
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Speaker 2: So cut Her welcome to the podcast. Thank you. For
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Speaker 2: being here.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, hey, thanks for inviting me on. It'll be fun.
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Speaker 1: I don't meet a ton of people who do the
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Speaker 1: depth of work you've done in two disciplines. So PhD
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Speaker 1: in theology and PhD in psychology.
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Speaker 3: Correct, that is correct? That is correct. Yeah, just brutal,
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Speaker 3: glutton for punishment or something.
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Speaker 1: Right, you finished one and decided to actually go back.
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Speaker 1: It's impressive. I love I love doing interdisciplinary work. So
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Speaker 1: I've read a few of your books in the past
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Speaker 1: and really enjoyed them, and so really great to have
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Speaker 1: you here.
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Speaker 3: Wonderful. Yeah, and I think I told you I got
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Speaker 3: onto your podcast through none other than my mom. So
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Speaker 3: you come with your your name precedes.
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Speaker 1: You, and I have a good I have a good recommendation,
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Speaker 1: I hope. Well, very cool. I've been doing some work
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Speaker 1: and my co host and I who couldn't be here today,
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Speaker 1: but we've been doing some conversations around this notion of
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Speaker 1: biblical manhood, biblical masculinity, and some of the things that
2:06
Speaker 1: have really started to bother me, particularly as my son's
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Speaker 1: gotten into his twenties. Yeah, you know, and just trying
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Speaker 1: to figure out, like, why is it that we're construing
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Speaker 1: biblical masculinity in this way. Had some guests on over
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Speaker 1: the last couple of years that you know, talked about
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Speaker 1: Jesus being a model of masculinity. Didn't quite understand that
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Speaker 1: fully ran across a lot of marked Driscoll's work didn't
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Speaker 1: really resonate with that, and I saw you didn't either,
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Speaker 1: And so I'm wondering if you can, maybe we can
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Speaker 1: start out just what do you think is driving this
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Speaker 1: sort of misapprehension of biblical masculinity, biblical manhood. Why is
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Speaker 1: this emerging at this point? Any thoughts on that?
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Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, as with anything, I think it's complex. Right,
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Speaker 3: there's probably multiple streams that are kind of over lapping
3:00
Speaker 3: and historically contingent. I do think there's we could call
3:07
Speaker 3: it an origin story, right, there is a I still
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Speaker 3: believe that evangelicals in the US have are And you'll
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Speaker 3: even hear this with some people that that speak on this.
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Speaker 3: I won't name their names here, but I just listened
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Speaker 3: to part of a podcast of a president of a
3:28
Speaker 3: major seminary and he was talking about basically still responding
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Speaker 3: to the feminist movement, that that that this thing happened,
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Speaker 3: and feminism happened, and it was this great evil and
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Speaker 3: we have to respond to that. And and that response
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Speaker 3: was this like doubling down on how on what I
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Speaker 3: would call traditional gendered roles that that aren't Christian, they're
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Speaker 3: just they're like post industrial Western visions of gender roles.
4:00
Speaker 3: But something was so threatening to let's call it the
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Speaker 3: establishment or mainstream evangelicalism, that there's been an overwhelming response
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Speaker 3: to a number of and you could also include the
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Speaker 3: sort of sexual revolution right of the sixties, et cetera.
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Speaker 3: And some of that was legitimate, right, like how do
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Speaker 3: we steward or navigate our sexuality? That's an important conversation
4:21
Speaker 3: to have. But then when it became will you do
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Speaker 3: it by adhering to these like super rigid ideas of
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Speaker 3: both masculinity and then its inverse femininity, that that became
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Speaker 3: the answer to what I think was a perceived threat
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Speaker 3: for fear. Well kind of fast forward, Oh you want
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Speaker 3: to chip in on the no, go ahead, Well, fast
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Speaker 3: forward to the to now. And what I see is
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Speaker 3: there's been you know, an ongoing you get the Promise
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Speaker 3: Keeper's movement and other things where evangelicals still recognize some
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Speaker 3: of the deep sort of loneliness of men. But then
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Speaker 3: also a lot of like sexual dysfunction, and they're going,
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Speaker 3: how do.
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Speaker 2: We what do we do?
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Speaker 3: How do we rally? And again these are good, sincere efforts,
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Speaker 3: but it kind of ended up promoting a vision of
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Speaker 3: masculinity that was again a very sort of what we
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Speaker 3: would now call like mana sphere, sort of bra culture.
5:17
Speaker 3: And then you get to the development of politically in
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Speaker 3: the US, it just happens that all these other thing
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Speaker 3: forces align and now you have people in the name
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Speaker 3: of Christ adopting what I think are some pretty toxic
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Speaker 3: visions of masculinity as if they are Christian, and it's
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Speaker 3: deeply appealing to right now a bunch of really lonely
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Speaker 3: men who are more disconnected than ever, even though they're
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Speaker 3: networked online, and it is really appealing. So the Driscolls
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Speaker 3: of the world the others are speaking to some of
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Speaker 3: those kind of implicit feelings and stoking that kind of
5:53
Speaker 3: energy in a direction that is actually really appealing to people.
5:58
Speaker 3: So I think right now it's that perfect storm of
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Speaker 3: both a history and theological movement and then a moment
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Speaker 3: in time where these sort of technologies and different sort
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Speaker 3: of socio political movements are all kind of aligning.
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Speaker 2: It's interesting to me.
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Speaker 1: I can understand the response too, and I think there's
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Speaker 1: a degree to which, you know, if men are in crisis,
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Speaker 1: or to the extent that men are in crisis in
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Speaker 1: very particular ways, that.
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Speaker 2: Does deserve a response.
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Speaker 1: What I've always just sort of puzzled about is why
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Speaker 1: that response isn't discipleship, why it has to be this.
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Speaker 2: Movement toward machismo.
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Speaker 1: There were a couple of folks that I had on
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Speaker 1: the show that talked about having a big monster truck
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Speaker 1: at their men's rally, and you know, they're trying to
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Speaker 1: get a tank, and I'm sort of sitting there, you know,
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Speaker 1: as a two hundred pound tattooed guy who likes to
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Speaker 1: lift weights going, I have no interest in any of that.
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Speaker 1: I just don't even understand, like how we get to
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Speaker 1: the point where there are certain marks of masculinity that
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Speaker 1: we have to hit, and how we think that's going
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Speaker 1: to be particularly helpful in leading us toward conformative to
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Speaker 1: the image of Christ. It seems to me that we're
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Speaker 1: putting like this cultural screen between us and Jesus and
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Speaker 1: saying this is who he was when he really wasn't that.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, I think you're asolutely right and in it. I
7:23
Speaker 3: have to stop myself sometimes and not like pull my
7:26
Speaker 3: hair out and go. And part of it is I
7:32
Speaker 3: think I'm kind of riffing here, so I'll deny it
7:37
Speaker 3: if later I think now that wasn't quite right. But
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Speaker 3: I think discipleship is absolutely right. Like that is and
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Speaker 3: what I would call table fellowship, that is the thing
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Speaker 3: that Christian community offers the world. It's essentially a new
7:55
Speaker 3: kind of family. So what Jesus said was not oh
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Speaker 3: my biological camera, who are my brothers, who are my sisters?
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Speaker 3: Those who do the will of the Father? Okay, Jesus
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Speaker 3: offers us like an entirely new vision of what it
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Speaker 3: means to be a family as a single man, by
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Speaker 3: the way, who did not demonstrate any of the sort
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Speaker 3: of machismo that we're describing, and invited people to the
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Speaker 3: table that otherwise would not have been identifiably in those
8:21
Speaker 3: sort of stereotypes either. They were always sort of like
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Speaker 3: against the grain of what the normative vision was in
8:27
Speaker 3: their time. And to me, that is how we might
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Speaker 3: think about Christian discipleship, Like how do I fellowship within
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Speaker 3: the Christian community and invite others in and then what
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Speaker 3: are the things that we do as disciples of this
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Speaker 3: man Jesus, And that, for some reason, even within our
8:45
Speaker 3: Christian churches, is not the path that was chosen. It's
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Speaker 3: this other path when it comes to specifically man. And
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Speaker 3: I've heard back from a lot of women also, they're like, oh,
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Speaker 3: same thing with women's retreats. It's like I don't fit
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Speaker 3: that at all, and they're trying to like tell me
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Speaker 3: I got to do this thing, and I don't. I
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Speaker 3: don't see myself in that at all. And that's where
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Speaker 3: I think you're absolutely right. The diagnosis is, well, it
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Speaker 3: can't be that this came from us, you know, in
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Speaker 3: good faith, following what Jesus did and lived and said.
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Speaker 3: Something else is getting in between, and it can't be.
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Speaker 3: To me, it has to be that's the movement of culture,
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Speaker 3: right that that's where society right now, and certain segments
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Speaker 3: of society, not all of it, but certain segments are
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Speaker 3: saying this is what manhood looks like. And you know,
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Speaker 3: unsurprisingly it skews toward the violent, the oppressive, the the
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Speaker 3: kind of dominating vision. And to me, that's incredibly tragic
9:42
Speaker 3: from a Christian perspective, because of course Jesus was the
9:45
Speaker 3: opposite of all those things, and so I do, along
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Speaker 3: with you sometimes kind of stand back and say where
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Speaker 3: and how did we get to this place? And then
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Speaker 3: maybe secondly, how do we how do we do something
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Speaker 3: about it moving forward? I think that the other thing
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Speaker 3: that we haven't yet given a great vision of a better,
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Speaker 3: more viable alternative, And I think that's kind of what
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Speaker 3: I'm I'm longing for as both a male and then
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Speaker 3: as a Christian brother to my sisters as well.
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Speaker 1: It feels like it's going to take a lot of
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Speaker 1: discipline to do it, because I can even say, even
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Speaker 1: when when Ashish and I my co host, have had
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Speaker 1: these conversations, it's easy to fall into the language of bravado, Right,
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Speaker 1: It's easy to fall back into it because it's sort
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Speaker 1: of in the ether, right, it's the air we're breathing.
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Speaker 1: And so we've we've got to find new disciplined ways
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Speaker 1: of speaking that can convey who we are as disciples
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Speaker 1: and probably who we are as male disciples, but not
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Speaker 1: necessarily over prescribe that for everyone.
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Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, you know again, I'm I want to hold
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Speaker 3: out hope that the gathered worshiping community is critical that
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Speaker 3: we're doing something there right the life of the church
11:07
Speaker 3: that we gather together. And then you go, okay, so
11:10
Speaker 3: what is it that we do when we gather together?
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Speaker 3: And is it to express the like the most sort
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Speaker 3: of puerile version of what's in me and celebrate that,
11:21
Speaker 3: or is it to say, how can we create? Because
11:24
Speaker 3: again I'm not like, well, I guess when bring us
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Speaker 3: up the blog that you or the newsletter that you wrote,
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Speaker 3: I've talked about men's retreats, and I'm not against that,
11:32
Speaker 3: like I'm actually quite four, like, how do we get
11:35
Speaker 3: together and hold each other accountable? And you know, these
11:37
Speaker 3: are good things, but it has to somehow start I mean,
11:42
Speaker 3: against your point, it has to be disciplined and has
11:44
Speaker 3: to be a commitment, and you have to be able
11:47
Speaker 3: to allow yourself to be in the presence of people
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Speaker 3: who don't think and look and act just like you.
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Speaker 3: And that I think is one of the underlying issues
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Speaker 3: I mean society wide, but especially with the church right now. Everyone,
12:01
Speaker 3: anytime you have the option to just leave and go
12:03
Speaker 3: do a different church, we've we've inculcated this idea that
12:08
Speaker 3: my fellowship should be comprised of people that are exactly
12:13
Speaker 3: like me like a homogeneous thing, and the moment there's
12:16
Speaker 3: an other, and that's that that discomfort is not okay,
12:21
Speaker 3: it's it's I will not abide it, and so I'm
12:23
Speaker 3: going to go find another place. So there's multiple I
12:26
Speaker 3: think layers of us having to kind of unlearn those habits.
12:30
Speaker 3: But I do think how we teach from the pulpit,
12:33
Speaker 3: how we worship, how we uh sort of liturgically shape ourselves,
12:38
Speaker 3: both in you know, let's say Sunday worship, but then
12:41
Speaker 3: also throughout the week and special occasions. I think that
12:44
Speaker 3: is the formative place where it can happen. And so
12:47
Speaker 3: you could imagine a men's retreat that isn't you know,
12:51
Speaker 3: a bunch of just barbecue and.
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Speaker 2: With the ball.
12:54
Speaker 3: I mean I like barbecue too, like I like it.
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Speaker 3: But it's something about how do we interact with the
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Speaker 3: the sensitive parts of our ourself, the artistic sides of ourself,
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Speaker 3: the the vulnerable, the fragile, the uncertain sides of ourself,
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Speaker 3: and and not just explore them, but but set those
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Speaker 3: up as legitimate, viable, Jesus like parts of what it
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Speaker 3: means to be male. I just you know it the
13:22
Speaker 3: Bravado cells.
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Speaker 2: And that's that's right.
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Speaker 3: You know, it's a big shot tank. I mean, like,
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Speaker 3: really was that really? Like they were trying to get
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Speaker 3: an actual tank?
13:32
Speaker 2: Yeah, an actual thank ye.
13:35
Speaker 3: Yeah.
13:35
Speaker 1: And I was like, I don't. I mean, I've seen
13:37
Speaker 1: them at museums and air shows and stuff like that.
13:39
Speaker 1: It's cool, but I don't I don't understand, Like my
13:43
Speaker 1: kids love them, Like I'm almost fifty, I'm good without
13:49
Speaker 1: a tank, yeah, tank or a monster trug. Like, it's
13:54
Speaker 1: just not I'm not a large boy. I like, I
13:58
Speaker 1: don't like those things anymore. And great for the people
14:01
Speaker 1: who do, I suppose, but it's just not a draw
14:03
Speaker 1: for me.
14:04
Speaker 3: That's that's a really interesting point. I don't know if
14:07
Speaker 3: you had talked about before or intended it, but it
14:09
Speaker 3: is an incredibly sort of immature vision of masculinity as well.
14:15
Speaker 3: A seven year old boy, Yeah, he's gonna go wrestle
14:17
Speaker 3: and play with tanks and like get in fights and
14:19
Speaker 3: all that stuff. But we're not seven year old boys.
14:23
Speaker 3: And and there's we don't want to shame the seven
14:26
Speaker 3: year old self. We don't want to say that's bad.
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Speaker 3: There's something still in us that is, you know, driven
14:32
Speaker 3: by the testosterone, you know. But again I'm also nearing fifty,
14:34
Speaker 3: so I got a lot less testosterone than I used
14:38
Speaker 3: to do, right, So I'm just like, that's not any so,
14:42
Speaker 3: but that is a yeah as we think through what
14:44
Speaker 3: is to come, that kind of bravado is a deeply
14:48
Speaker 3: immature vision of masculinity, and part of I think what
14:53
Speaker 3: people are longing for is like, what does an actual robust,
14:55
Speaker 3: mature vision look like? And my goodness, it would help
14:59
Speaker 3: if we started with g I think of mapping that out.
15:03
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think I have two questions I want
15:06
Speaker 1: to kind of dive into a little deeper, because men's
15:08
Speaker 1: retreats and men gathering together as men to do discipleship
15:12
Speaker 1: I actually struggled with when I started getting into this
15:14
Speaker 1: topic a little bit.
15:16
Speaker 2: At first.
15:16
Speaker 1: I was like, I don't know, I don't know that
15:18
Speaker 1: these things aren't going to always do more harm than
15:20
Speaker 1: they are good. And so sort of where I ended
15:22
Speaker 1: up landing was saying, no, it's really good for men
15:25
Speaker 1: to get together and talk about the cultural expectations of
15:29
Speaker 1: the moment that are putting pressure on them and seeking
15:34
Speaker 1: to hinder them from becoming more like Christ. Because I
15:38
Speaker 1: think that there are going to be those unique pressures
15:40
Speaker 1: on men, just as there would be unique pressures on women. Right,
15:46
Speaker 1: So I'd like that's sort of where I positioned it
15:48
Speaker 1: and said, if men were going to get together, it
15:50
Speaker 1: would be great if they said, hey, these are the
15:52
Speaker 1: things that are really hindering me from.
15:54
Speaker 2: Being a man of Christ.
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Speaker 1: I feel like I'm being uniquely conformed to this particular
16:00
Speaker 1: culture and its vision of manhood as opposed to a
16:03
Speaker 1: biblical vision of what it means to be a male disciple.
16:08
Speaker 1: Is that how you think of those men's retreats?
16:10
Speaker 3: Like is that a yeah, it's a good question because I've,
16:13
Speaker 3: like you gone back and forth of like, oh, they're
16:15
Speaker 3: just rubbish, stop it, and I'm like, no, that's too
16:19
Speaker 3: that's too quick. Don't feel the baby's bathwater. And again,
16:23
Speaker 3: because I also have multile friends that they really love them, like,
16:26
Speaker 3: it's like they look forward to it, I'm like, man,
16:29
Speaker 3: I just though, so I also wanted to count that it's,
16:32
Speaker 3: you know, doing something for some people. But I do think, yeah,
16:37
Speaker 3: how you frame it, what your intentions are, you know,
16:41
Speaker 3: what the actual content of it is is important. I'd
16:44
Speaker 3: also think, I mean, again, in an ideal world, it
16:47
Speaker 3: seems like you could do a congregational retreat and have
16:52
Speaker 3: different kind of like pathways where you have some time
16:56
Speaker 3: where men get together and talk about those specific things.
16:59
Speaker 3: Women get together to other things. People that have kids
17:01
Speaker 3: and families they get to, you know, like talk about that,
17:04
Speaker 3: and people who are single and try, you know, like
17:07
Speaker 3: all of those different things that we really do overlap.
17:10
Speaker 3: But it'd be good if you, I think if you
17:12
Speaker 3: could imagine a retreat where you're able to engage with
17:16
Speaker 3: each of those issues and those smaller kind of affiliation
17:18
Speaker 3: groups while still recognizing we actually can't have this conversation
17:22
Speaker 3: without our sisters in Christ in the room without you know,
17:26
Speaker 3: so that they too, because obviously the more the reason
17:32
Speaker 3: that they now use the language of toxic masculinity is
17:36
Speaker 3: because it's it doesn't just affect men, it also affects
17:39
Speaker 3: women or vice versas. Yeah, so how do we like
17:43
Speaker 3: It's not simply about how do I, as a man
17:45
Speaker 3: individually navigate this world as a disciple, it's how do
17:49
Speaker 3: all those pressures inform the larger body? So so I
17:52
Speaker 3: think that would be interesting. It's I've also thought through.
17:56
Speaker 3: I have a book on marriage. It's called Breaking the
17:59
Speaker 3: Marriage title, and it actually started in my I don't
18:02
Speaker 3: title my books the publishers I do, but I think
18:06
Speaker 3: I was titled sex Saints and singleness was the first
18:10
Speaker 3: phrase that I was going with, because sex cells baby
18:13
Speaker 3: just like barbecues. And the reason is because we got
18:18
Speaker 3: to this point of going how it really is hard
18:21
Speaker 3: logistically to get married people with kids together with single people,
18:25
Speaker 3: just like I feel bad making my single friends adopt
18:29
Speaker 3: the schedule of my kids, but I don't have a
18:31
Speaker 3: choice as a dad like I have to. So it's
18:34
Speaker 3: actually kind of hard. However, I like, I think again,
18:39
Speaker 3: all these affiliation groups where now you have ministries that
18:42
Speaker 3: are just for single people or just for men, actually
18:46
Speaker 3: prevents us from doing what is actually real world difficult relationship.
18:53
Speaker 3: Christian community is hard. It's really hard, and it's really inconvenient.
19:00
Speaker 3: And it's kind of like when we went through COVID
19:03
Speaker 3: and all of a sudden, people are like, oh, I
19:05
Speaker 3: could just do this online. I don't have it's very convenient.
19:07
Speaker 3: It's like, yeah, and that's terrible, Like that it is
19:10
Speaker 3: so convenient means you don't have to accommodate it, you know,
19:14
Speaker 3: like I no longer have to accommodate these differences, and
19:17
Speaker 3: so I am as with you. I am in a
19:21
Speaker 3: moment of maybe transitions the word these days, but I'm
19:26
Speaker 3: thinking through the value of those isolated sort of affiliation things.
19:34
Speaker 3: At the same time, I don't want to too quickly
19:36
Speaker 3: go there's some I have some perfect like solution that's
19:40
Speaker 3: going to get men in a room, get them feeling
19:43
Speaker 3: like they can talk about things that they know specifically,
19:46
Speaker 3: but then also not have it become what often they become.
19:50
Speaker 3: But I do know, whatever it is, it's difficult, and
19:53
Speaker 3: it requires us to make some sacrifices to actually get there,
19:58
Speaker 3: and it can look messy.
20:01
Speaker 2: Well when we think about Jesus.
20:08
Speaker 1: The conversation that I've had with folks have been interesting,
20:11
Speaker 1: and I would say some of the people I've had
20:13
Speaker 1: back on the podcast again, but also some of the
20:16
Speaker 1: things I've read. So I'll use You mentioned Driscoll in
20:20
Speaker 1: your piece, and you talk about him.
20:22
Speaker 2: I'm reading from it.
20:22
Speaker 1: It says I realized Driscoll is an easy target at
20:25
Speaker 1: this point. He's become almost a parody of himself in
20:28
Speaker 1: the way that he projects his laughably muscular form of Christianity.
20:34
Speaker 1: I read his book Act like a Man. I don't
20:36
Speaker 1: know whether you've ever taken a time now. So here's
20:41
Speaker 1: my question about Jesus, and I think it's informed by
20:44
Speaker 1: some of the ways that Jesus is sort of co
20:46
Speaker 1: opted into this masculinity conversation. There are sections in Driscoll's
20:50
Speaker 1: book where he talks about men expressing emotion and how
20:55
Speaker 1: it's not anti masculine for men to express emotion, and
20:58
Speaker 1: then he talks about Jesus weeping when Lazarus is when
21:03
Speaker 1: he finds Lazarus dead, and he says something like, but
21:07
Speaker 1: he weeps in a masculine way. Now, if we go
21:11
Speaker 1: to the text right and we see Jesus weeping and
21:14
Speaker 1: we see, you know, the other people weeping, it's.
21:17
Speaker 2: The same exact Greek word.
21:18
Speaker 1: There's no descriptive difference in the text, Like we have
21:21
Speaker 1: no clue whether Jesus is how Jesus is weeping. We
21:25
Speaker 1: just know that Jesus is weeping. But in part he
21:29
Speaker 1: leverages that to say Jesus is the penultimate male and
21:36
Speaker 1: shows us what it means to be masculine. And I
21:40
Speaker 1: think my question with that always is and I have
21:42
Speaker 1: a feeling we're gonna have very similar perspectives on this,
21:45
Speaker 1: but I don't know how to tease out when Jesus
21:49
Speaker 1: is showing us how to be masculine and when Jesus
21:54
Speaker 1: is showing us how to be human.
21:56
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I think that's exactly right. And tow it
22:03
Speaker 3: gets even more complicated if you follow that line of
22:06
Speaker 3: logic to say, well, wait a minute, don't aren't women
22:10
Speaker 3: supposed to be conformed to the image of Christ and Jesus? Like,
22:14
Speaker 3: does that mean there do they become men? And actually
22:18
Speaker 3: there's streams of Jewish thoughts. That was basically that, like,
22:22
Speaker 3: you are resurrected as a male, and I'm going taking
22:26
Speaker 3: all the rest of Jesus teaching together. It's like that
22:29
Speaker 3: clearly is just a non starter when it comes to
22:32
Speaker 3: what Jesus. And then later Paul would say, right, so
22:36
Speaker 3: I think yes, to me, that ends up, you know,
22:41
Speaker 3: only knowing what you just told me, so and I
22:43
Speaker 3: trust you. Yeah, that really is an ironic way to
22:46
Speaker 3: say to me. Probably what happened is I'm just putting
22:51
Speaker 3: myself in his second he was he had a thesis,
22:55
Speaker 3: here's here's what it is. And then he's like, ooh,
22:57
Speaker 3: I've got these the counter arguments that are easily thrown
23:02
Speaker 3: in my face. How do I rebutt it, and I
23:04
Speaker 3: was like, oh, it's because Jesus wept masculinely, like clearly
23:09
Speaker 3: that and so but yeah, that's like completely made up.
23:12
Speaker 3: Like in the end, it actually undermines his thing, because
23:17
Speaker 3: in fact Jesus wept, and if in fact he said
23:20
Speaker 3: now again first entry Palestine, I think weeping was also
23:26
Speaker 3: not gendered and was a very normal thing for men
23:30
Speaker 3: to do. We've got to recognize now that it's not
23:33
Speaker 3: is a more recent epimation, but it clearly undermines his
23:37
Speaker 3: point that our gendered stereotypes that emotions are bad are
23:42
Speaker 3: undermined by Jesus. And then he kind of like gives
23:46
Speaker 3: it and then pulls the rug out from under you
23:47
Speaker 3: and say, ah, but actually it reinforces the very gender
23:50
Speaker 3: stereotypes that I'm bringing to the text. So I'm with you.
23:54
Speaker 3: I think that's uh, there's multiple problems with that that exegesis,
24:00
Speaker 3: but especially then the practical application as it concerns men
24:05
Speaker 3: and women. But it is the common thread. I mean,
24:10
Speaker 3: some of the people that have responded to my sub
24:12
Speaker 3: stack initially like they'll go, well, you know King David,
24:16
Speaker 3: he was a warrior, and I was like, yeah, and
24:20
Speaker 3: the Bible's pretty clear about condemning most of his violent,
24:25
Speaker 3: oppressive acts and actually lifts him up for his poetic,
24:30
Speaker 3: sensitive vulnerability. So even there, you're the example, but people
24:36
Speaker 3: really want to press into this warrior strength. I'm gonna
24:41
Speaker 3: cry masculinely and I want to be humble enough to
24:45
Speaker 3: say I want to be able to you know, what
24:49
Speaker 3: is it, iron man your argument and say I want
24:53
Speaker 3: to see really how you're getting there and acknowledge I'm
24:56
Speaker 3: imperfect and I don't have the absolute right interpretation. But
25:01
Speaker 3: some of these I'm like, it's just not passing the
25:02
Speaker 3: SNIF test. That doesn't work in terms of who I
25:06
Speaker 3: know Jesus to be. And that's just really good example.
25:10
Speaker 1: I think, Yeah, I've seen there's other aspects of Driscoll's
25:16
Speaker 1: work that I think are odd in that same way.
25:19
Speaker 1: You know, Paul didn't get married because he died too soon,
25:23
Speaker 1: you know, those kind of things, and you just sort
25:25
Speaker 1: of sit back and you're like, well that he did
25:27
Speaker 1: talk about singleness and why he was single.
25:29
Speaker 2: And we're just going to ignore that.
25:31
Speaker 1: Bard Like, but then I go to, you know, maybe
25:34
Speaker 1: some more robust theologians, some of the folks in the
25:38
Speaker 1: Biblical manhood sort of like John Piper or whomever, and
25:42
Speaker 1: I look at their exit Jesus, and I see them
25:44
Speaker 1: slipping into this at certain points, like a reading in
25:47
Speaker 1: back of that masculinity into it. I can remember one
25:50
Speaker 1: of my seminary professors talking to me, or not talking
25:52
Speaker 1: to me, talking to the class and telling us you
25:56
Speaker 1: should make sure that your wife never makes more money
25:58
Speaker 1: than you do. Now that's coming on the heels of
26:01
Speaker 1: him telling us most of us will be in rural pastorates,
26:04
Speaker 1: and you know, like, we're not going to be making
26:05
Speaker 1: much money. And then my wife was pursuing her pharmacy degree,
26:10
Speaker 1: and I'm like, she could literally work half halftime and
26:14
Speaker 1: make more than you're telling me. I guess I could
26:16
Speaker 1: as a as a pastor. And so it was one
26:19
Speaker 1: of those things where when I heard it, I just
26:21
Speaker 1: sort of let it slide past me, like this is
26:25
Speaker 1: just one of those weird things. But I know other
26:27
Speaker 1: people in the class didn't do that, like they actually
26:31
Speaker 1: heard it and were taking it in as really sage advice.
26:34
Speaker 2: From someone who'd been there.
26:36
Speaker 1: And you just sort of sit back and you're like,
26:38
Speaker 1: we're propagating things that are going to ultimately I think
26:43
Speaker 1: be unhelpful for people to understand who Jesus is to
26:49
Speaker 1: conform to his image. Not practically unhelpful, maybe right, you
26:54
Speaker 1: could see that working for some people, but certainly not
26:58
Speaker 1: necessary for all people.
27:00
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I'm with you. I mean, I support any
27:06
Speaker 3: sort of arrangement that spouses want to come up with that.
27:09
Speaker 3: It's like, you know, and there's all sorts of difference,
27:13
Speaker 3: and I have because I, you know, was shaped by
27:16
Speaker 3: similar kinds of thinking. It's even I'm often hesitant to
27:20
Speaker 3: let people know my wife does all of our budgeting
27:25
Speaker 3: like she runs she is our families like accountant. And
27:29
Speaker 3: that is good because I have ADHD and I would
27:33
Speaker 3: bankrupt us if I managed our finances just flat out.
27:37
Speaker 3: I you know, before we got married, I did not
27:39
Speaker 3: have a nice checkbook. I'm like, I think I got
27:41
Speaker 3: about one hundred bucks, you know something. And but but
27:44
Speaker 3: even that, and then also she's been at home for
27:48
Speaker 3: the last decade because of our kids. But it's going
27:51
Speaker 3: to go back into the workforce and easily can out
27:54
Speaker 3: earn me, like just easily, and having to like even
28:00
Speaker 3: attempt to prevent her from doing that or to justify
28:04
Speaker 3: it to others as if we're somehow a non you know,
28:08
Speaker 3: Jesus approved the couple, Like, it's just I don't understand that,
28:12
Speaker 3: and and so I do think though another as I
28:16
Speaker 3: you asked, like, why is this so attractive? Yeah, I
28:20
Speaker 3: can read it both in uh, you know, a what
28:25
Speaker 3: would you call it? A sort of deconstruction this way
28:28
Speaker 3: and then also a theological way if you just basic
28:33
Speaker 3: kind of uh, how do we trying to not say
28:37
Speaker 3: certain words that will trigger people? If you think about
28:42
Speaker 3: it in terms of power dynamics, it makes sense that
28:46
Speaker 3: the people who are in power would make interpretations and
28:50
Speaker 3: teachings and policies that would reinforce that power so that
28:55
Speaker 3: they keep it and do anything in their power to
28:58
Speaker 3: ensure those who might threaten that cannot threaten them. And
29:02
Speaker 3: so on that side, I go, there is a lot
29:06
Speaker 3: that men, even Christian men, Christian men who are leaders,
29:10
Speaker 3: a lot they have at stake if in fact they
29:14
Speaker 3: don't reinforce this very domineering head of everything, vision of masculinity,
29:20
Speaker 3: who controls the budget, controls the finances, cannot cannot handle
29:25
Speaker 3: the idea that a spouse would make more like, because
29:28
Speaker 3: that's all a threat. And I'm sure you've talked about
29:30
Speaker 3: this in others that it's like, actually, women in power
29:34
Speaker 3: are only a threat to mediocre men. That's who's a
29:39
Speaker 3: threat to If you're actually a confident, well qualified, capable man,
29:44
Speaker 3: having a strong capable woman, either as a spouse or
29:47
Speaker 3: a college or something, not a threat at all. Right,
29:50
Speaker 3: And so it's interesting that you get I don't want
29:54
Speaker 3: to call them all mediocre, but it helps for the
29:57
Speaker 3: mediocre of our of our agender to instill that kind
30:02
Speaker 3: of power dynamic at every level of the institution. Theological
30:07
Speaker 3: side I've been thinking through, which I find strangely tone
30:11
Speaker 3: deaf or ironic or just again bad Exto Jesus, is
30:14
Speaker 3: that the the lordship over women, the dynamic of that
30:20
Speaker 3: power or that power dynamic is directly related to the
30:24
Speaker 3: fall biblically right, and yet it's held up as the
30:30
Speaker 3: way that God designs. Yeah, like wait, no, that's a
30:35
Speaker 3: you are replicating the results of sin entering the world
30:39
Speaker 3: when you prop that up as the ideal. And I
30:43
Speaker 3: don't for some reason, it doesn't seem that people kind
30:46
Speaker 3: of go there. It just you know, goes to Ephesians
30:49
Speaker 3: or wherever, which I think is also a bad Exo Jesus,
30:51
Speaker 3: but still I find that interesting that that theologically it
30:56
Speaker 3: makes sense that broken men would leverage their biological strength
31:03
Speaker 3: and power to ensure they always have access to power
31:07
Speaker 3: and that's not threatened. And so I think both in
31:08
Speaker 3: a theological way, I go, that's that is, I think
31:12
Speaker 3: a reflection of sin, what I would call the sort
31:16
Speaker 3: of sinful structures that we inhabit. And it's also I
31:20
Speaker 3: think ideologically you can read it as a sort of
31:24
Speaker 3: power imbalance that the powerful will always try to wield it.
31:28
Speaker 1: I had I don't even ever read her stuff on this,
31:31
Speaker 1: but Caitlin Batty wrote a series of articles on Substack,
31:34
Speaker 1: the evangelical bro Code.
31:35
Speaker 2: Are you familiar with these?
31:36
Speaker 3: Oh? I don't know if I read that one, but
31:38
Speaker 3: I know I love Kate and LEAs. She's great.
31:40
Speaker 1: Yeah, So she was on and we were talking about
31:41
Speaker 1: the evangelical bro code, and you know her her ideas
31:45
Speaker 1: that within Christian organizations, men take care of men, and
31:48
Speaker 1: so there's this bro code in the organizations and if
31:51
Speaker 1: you're a if you're a guy, you know, you you
31:53
Speaker 1: kind of get special treatment. The idea, I'm one of
31:57
Speaker 1: the one the one of the conversations I remember is,
31:59
Speaker 1: you know, because the men are afraid of falling into
32:02
Speaker 1: sexual sin, they won't meet and mentor women, and so
32:05
Speaker 1: then the men get special treatment.
32:07
Speaker 2: And it's sort of this.
32:08
Speaker 1: Weird structural problem within organizations. And I sort of looked
32:15
Speaker 1: at her work and thought to myself, I agree with
32:18
Speaker 1: everything she's saying pretty much about what it does to women,
32:22
Speaker 1: but it also does really horrible things to men. Like
32:26
Speaker 1: this is holding both of holding everybody back, because it's
32:30
Speaker 1: not creating that sort of context of challenge and pushing
32:35
Speaker 1: people forward, helping them understand who they really are, what
32:39
Speaker 1: their capacities are, what their limits are, you know, where
32:41
Speaker 1: they need to improve. You're not showing any of that
32:44
Speaker 1: when you fall into these sort of bro code moments.
32:47
Speaker 1: And I think that there's a sense in which a
32:50
Speaker 1: lot of this sort of bravado and masculinity that we're
32:53
Speaker 1: seeing in the church now is going to privilege a
32:59
Speaker 1: segment of men who probably are shouldn't be in charge,
33:05
Speaker 1: that are are leaning into immaturity really in order to
33:11
Speaker 1: assert themselves. The interesting part that I think they're bringing
33:16
Speaker 1: up sort of that theological side, is that sometimes.
33:21
Speaker 2: There's a.
33:23
Speaker 1: There's a real academic or biblically faithful air that is
33:29
Speaker 1: used to sort of prop that up. And I know
33:33
Speaker 1: you've kind of written on the SBC. I don't necessarily
33:35
Speaker 1: want to go into that unless you're comfortable with it.
33:37
Speaker 1: But I'm kind of starting to see certain connections that
33:41
Speaker 1: I didn't see before. Right when I look at just
33:44
Speaker 1: the straight complementary and egalitarian debate, you sort of sit
33:48
Speaker 1: back and go, Okay, well choose either one. You know,
33:53
Speaker 1: the complementarian isn't necessarily you know, engaged in this sort
33:57
Speaker 1: of misogynistic bit. The egalitary isn't necessarily into this feminist
34:02
Speaker 1: ideology kind of stuff. But I think coming at it
34:06
Speaker 1: from this angle of, you know, Biblical manhood as sort
34:11
Speaker 1: of machismo and as sort of bravado, it's hard not
34:15
Speaker 1: to begin seeing that and some of what's going on
34:18
Speaker 1: in the SBC right now.
34:19
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, And so I don't know, I don't know
34:21
Speaker 2: whether you want to comment on that or not.
34:24
Speaker 3: Yeah, uh see if I can pack. So, I think
34:28
Speaker 3: you're right. And and for the record, there are non
34:34
Speaker 3: misogynistic complementarians. I mean that's just true, one hundred percent.
34:37
Speaker 2: Yeah.
34:38
Speaker 3: Good, just if anyone's listening. In another substack, author and
34:41
Speaker 3: friend of mine, Danny Treewick is actually Australian theologian and
34:45
Speaker 3: she has a couple of books on singleness but she
34:49
Speaker 3: that are really great and her substack is good. But
34:53
Speaker 3: she's been writing the last couple of weeks on what
34:55
Speaker 3: it's like to be a complementarian, right woman right now? Right?
34:58
Speaker 3: So she's Yeah, so she's person that I think you
35:01
Speaker 3: could trust if you want to kind of go that rout. However,
35:05
Speaker 3: specifically with the SBC and the newsletter that I wrote
35:09
Speaker 3: on it was I think it's telling if all we
35:14
Speaker 3: had with the SBC was their move to exclude women
35:17
Speaker 3: from not just the title of pastor, but from even
35:20
Speaker 3: functioning in any sort of role, which I still practically
35:25
Speaker 3: don't know how that's going to happen, Like they'll just
35:28
Speaker 3: have to stop maybe going to church, I don't know.
35:31
Speaker 3: But Okay, if that's all you had, you could go. Well,
35:35
Speaker 3: maybe the charitable read of that is they really are
35:39
Speaker 3: just sincerely trying to enforce their interpretation of scripture that
35:44
Speaker 3: they really do think men should exclusively be in these roles,
35:48
Speaker 3: and like, sorry, that's what it says, right, okay, But
35:52
Speaker 3: where I go not so fast is they're ecclesiology. This
35:57
Speaker 3: gets back to where it's like these conflicting theologies, they're
35:59
Speaker 3: a theology already demands of them that they cannot they
36:05
Speaker 3: being the convention, cannot dictate to local congregations their decisions
36:11
Speaker 3: about this. That is like a distinctly Baptist thing for
36:16
Speaker 3: theological reasons that Baptists throughout history have said. Now, some
36:21
Speaker 3: Baptist churches, and many of them did not ordain women,
36:23
Speaker 3: but some could, And I mentioned in that article minded
36:26
Speaker 3: the ones that I was a part of. So if you,
36:30
Speaker 3: on number one, you have to violate your own ecclesiology
36:34
Speaker 3: to come up with this decision to marginalize women, that
36:37
Speaker 3: raises a red flag. And then the doubly raises a
36:40
Speaker 3: red flag when in the same calendar year they invoked
36:44
Speaker 3: that ecclesiology meaning we're all autonomous congregations to say we
36:49
Speaker 3: can do nothing about sexual predators who might be pastors.
36:53
Speaker 3: I'm going to me. That is an impossible thing to
36:57
Speaker 3: reconcile and to come to me and go, we are
37:00
Speaker 3: operating here in good faith. I'm going over here, you're
37:04
Speaker 3: protecting your bros. And over here you're getting rid of
37:07
Speaker 3: all the people that would actually call to account the
37:12
Speaker 3: violence and oppression that those bros are engaging, and in
37:15
Speaker 3: fact that is the case. It was predominantly women in
37:17
Speaker 3: the SBC saying we've experienced all of this sexual assault
37:22
Speaker 3: and violation and predation. We need to do something about it.
37:25
Speaker 3: And at the same and the same breath, they made
37:28
Speaker 3: both of those decisions. And to me, that's getting to
37:31
Speaker 3: your point of that is harmful not only for women
37:34
Speaker 3: and for children, but that does something too, And not again,
37:39
Speaker 3: not all of the call it the bro.
37:44
Speaker 2: The bro code, bro code, bro code, broke.
37:48
Speaker 3: I'm not saying everyone bro code is a sexual predator,
37:51
Speaker 3: not that, but including them or any of the other
37:54
Speaker 3: sort of distorted visions of masculinity that get animated protected,
38:00
Speaker 3: no one's calling him to account, no one's holding them accountable.
38:05
Speaker 3: As supposedly every Men's Retreat is supposed to do right,
38:08
Speaker 3: like that's what it's supposed to do, but in fact
38:10
Speaker 3: it's doing the opposite. And I often, well not often,
38:14
Speaker 3: I often think about this, but I don't know if
38:16
Speaker 3: I've said it out loud, because I was trying to
38:18
Speaker 3: work it into a stand up bit and I haven't
38:20
Speaker 3: quite got there. But the bro code, the manisphere reminds
38:25
Speaker 3: me a lot of the original Jurassic Park or any
38:28
Speaker 3: any movie address park. It's like, hey, remember remember that
38:32
Speaker 3: apex predator a long time ago that kind of like
38:34
Speaker 3: went extinct, but it just slaughtered everything in its wake.
38:39
Speaker 3: What if we what if we brought that back but
38:43
Speaker 3: added modern technology. Wouldn't that be awesome? It's like wait,
38:48
Speaker 3: what No? And that's what it feels like in the
38:50
Speaker 3: in the manisphere. It's like, all of a sudden, someone's like,
38:53
Speaker 3: let's bring back the apex, like classically horrible male and
38:57
Speaker 3: just give them technology and it's gonna be right.
39:00
Speaker 2: And I'm like let him explode.
39:02
Speaker 3: Well yeah, and I'm just like no, It's what's gonna
39:04
Speaker 3: happen is the velociraptor is gonna get out. It's gonna
39:07
Speaker 3: go nuts. And you know, like that's where it feels like.
39:10
Speaker 3: Often of that kind of the bro code is really
39:15
Speaker 3: like engineering something that that is really destructive and again
39:21
Speaker 3: filled with all sorts of in many cases, sincere people,
39:25
Speaker 3: And that I think is my It's and like I
39:27
Speaker 3: said with Driscoll and others, it's easy to kind of
39:29
Speaker 3: like go to the extremes and say but it's it's
39:33
Speaker 3: all of the like middle ground of people that are
39:35
Speaker 3: essentially doing the same thing that have I think the
39:39
Speaker 3: greatest impact on most of us.
39:43
Speaker 1: Agreed, And I appreciate your disclaimer. It's an innocent, appropriate
39:47
Speaker 1: disclaimer about like this isn't a blanket statement about anybody who.
39:51
Speaker 2: Holds a very particular position.
39:52
Speaker 1: It's not even a blanket statement about somebody who's in
39:54
Speaker 1: the SBC or whatever. But I do get your point
39:58
Speaker 1: about these two decisions that are made, one being we
40:03
Speaker 1: can't we can't do anything about the sexual predators because
40:06
Speaker 1: of our ecclesiology. The other is, but we can't do
40:09
Speaker 1: something about women being ordained. And you go, there would
40:12
Speaker 1: have been some level of you could almost claim a
40:16
Speaker 1: level of theological seriousness if they'd have done both. And
40:20
Speaker 1: you're saying, yes, these things are if they're sitting back
40:23
Speaker 1: going these are both worth us violating our ecclesiology to
40:28
Speaker 1: get done.
40:28
Speaker 2: Yep, right, it's not happening at the local level.
40:31
Speaker 1: We're going to violate our ecclesiology and make these two
40:33
Speaker 1: things happen. You could kind of sit back and go, hey,
40:37
Speaker 1: fair enough theological conviction. You know, appreciate your seriousness. I
40:42
Speaker 1: disagree with the one I agree with, you know, but
40:45
Speaker 1: where it's so uneven in that application, it just really
40:49
Speaker 1: feels very strange. And they almost had to have known
40:55
Speaker 1: that they would have been questioned on this. It just
40:58
Speaker 1: I don't see how they would have sat back and said,
41:01
Speaker 1: we'll make these two very divergent, you know, decisions, and
41:06
Speaker 1: and I'm sure everybody will just miss that fact.
41:10
Speaker 3: Well, I mean, that's the hope. I mean, I think
41:12
Speaker 3: that's often the hope is like we're moving on, you know,
41:14
Speaker 3: there's gonna be another thing that people are worried about.
41:16
Speaker 3: And and and when asked, I mean, the the you know,
41:20
Speaker 3: Executive committee basically is like, that's not our concern anymore,
41:23
Speaker 3: you know. And so it's like that that was the
41:25
Speaker 3: response when asked of like wait a minute, what and
41:30
Speaker 3: and had been passed and approved prior, like they committed
41:33
Speaker 3: to doing it. And so yeah, that that is my
41:36
Speaker 3: at least when I go into critique it. I think
41:38
Speaker 3: that's my most generous critique. That somebody replied going saying
41:43
Speaker 3: I'm assigning motive and being uncharitable. I'm like, well, okay, maybe,
41:49
Speaker 3: but all I have are their actions, and here's the
41:52
Speaker 3: consequence of their action. And I'm not trying to be uncharitable,
41:56
Speaker 3: but I actually think it's incredibly consequential. And I'm not
42:00
Speaker 3: going to sort of pull punches because someone thinks I'm
42:04
Speaker 3: lacking charity by calling those things out.
42:08
Speaker 1: But I don't think pointing out an inconsistency is uncharitable.
42:12
Speaker 1: It's just it's an inconsistency, and so here it is.
42:15
Speaker 2: I think.
42:18
Speaker 1: Ashiesh and I talked a little bit about the sort
42:21
Speaker 1: of notions of masculinity in relation to bond servants in
42:25
Speaker 1: the Bible. Obviously, bond servants there could have been a
42:28
Speaker 1: mix of men and women there, But there would have
42:30
Speaker 1: been a mix of men and women there, and so
42:32
Speaker 1: there would have been men, and so you have to
42:34
Speaker 1: ask yourself how to the instructions of bond servants advance
42:38
Speaker 1: them toward any sort of notion of masculinity that is
42:41
Speaker 1: now being put forth as a biblical masculinity. They're not
42:45
Speaker 1: told to enlarge their dominion. They're not told to, you know,
42:50
Speaker 1: revolt against their masters. They're told to live lives of
42:53
Speaker 1: subservience because God is the ultimate judge there. They are
42:59
Speaker 1: to live peaceably to show respect to their masters. These
43:03
Speaker 1: are not things that you tend to get emphasized in
43:08
Speaker 1: modern notions of biblical masculinity. You know, you sort of
43:12
Speaker 1: picture you referenced Braveheart in one of your articles here,
43:16
Speaker 1: and those stack and it's like, you know, the Scots
43:19
Speaker 1: are revolting, and we find some heroism in that, and
43:24
Speaker 1: it's a great movie, and so we watch it and
43:26
Speaker 1: we have a lot of fun with it, but it's
43:28
Speaker 1: not conveying a biblical teaching.
43:30
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's just fun to watch, right, Yeah.
43:35
Speaker 1: Yeah, And so I think those inconsistency I guess my
43:38
Speaker 1: point is, I think a lot of these have these inconsistencies,
43:42
Speaker 1: and if it if it starts to become uncharitable for
43:45
Speaker 1: us to point those inconsistencies out, there's just going to
43:48
Speaker 1: be a reified, you know, notion of what these things
43:52
Speaker 1: are that can never really be called.
43:54
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I'm with you. And you know, classic in
43:58
Speaker 3: the history of you know, male masculinity and evangelicalism, since
44:03
Speaker 3: we're naming names and Emerger School. I where I first
44:08
Speaker 3: consciously realized like, oh, this isn't for me was reading
44:14
Speaker 3: John Eldridge's Wild at Heart and he explicitly says that
44:21
Speaker 3: a Christian man should be William Wallace, not a mother
44:24
Speaker 3: Teresa and I was like, wait what, I'm like, okay,
44:29
Speaker 3: I'm tracking with you, Like, isn't William Mallas courageous and
44:32
Speaker 3: you know, and especially at that time in my life,
44:34
Speaker 3: I was like, okay, yeah, that makes sense. But then
44:36
Speaker 3: to like take are like a saint, a literal living saint,
44:41
Speaker 3: and say a Christian man shouldn't see her as a model,
44:46
Speaker 3: and it's like, I don't. I was like, oh, I see,
44:49
Speaker 3: this is not a conversation I'm allowed to be a
44:52
Speaker 3: part of anymore. And I do think in the United
44:56
Speaker 3: States in particular, this gets back to, you know, as
44:59
Speaker 3: we talk about sin or structural stuff, the proa code
45:03
Speaker 3: and how that I my my read of Paul's you know,
45:08
Speaker 3: rescuing against not flesh and blood, but powers and principalities. Yeah,
45:12
Speaker 3: I don't read that as they are some little disembodied
45:16
Speaker 3: spirits that are running around attacking us. I think it
45:19
Speaker 3: is these higher order, sort of emergent properties of any
45:25
Speaker 3: organization that actually operate outside of human control. It's anytime
45:31
Speaker 3: humans get together and organize, there's becomes this thing. And
45:33
Speaker 3: I'm sure you've experienced this others have. Where you go.
45:36
Speaker 3: I'm at a church, I'm at a business, I'm at whatever,
45:38
Speaker 3: and it's like, man, if I picked all these individuals
45:41
Speaker 3: and we went and started something on our own, it
45:43
Speaker 3: would look nothing like this. It's like we're we're almost
45:46
Speaker 3: victims to the machine that's making it. And I think
45:50
Speaker 3: one of the machineries of the sort of social imaginary
45:56
Speaker 3: of Americans writ large. But then American Christians is deeply militaristic.
46:02
Speaker 3: And it makes sense like we're about to celebrate the
46:04
Speaker 3: two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of America, right and and
46:08
Speaker 3: and it's based in like our successes in wars. It's
46:14
Speaker 3: we have the biggest military out there, like this vision
46:17
Speaker 3: of what it means to be. And in the past,
46:19
Speaker 3: we were always on the side of the good, right,
46:21
Speaker 3: Like it was that equals good and so holding up
46:25
Speaker 3: people like a William Wallace holding up people like you know,
46:28
Speaker 3: I mean, well, Mel Gibson was in the Patriot, He's
46:30
Speaker 3: been in a bunch of like war moves like ah,
46:33
Speaker 3: and again I'm a sucker for it. I'm like, yeah,
46:35
Speaker 3: go go Mel. But that has so informed, I would
46:39
Speaker 3: even say infected the way we understand not just the good,
46:46
Speaker 3: but male Christian sort of visions of masculinity. What we're
46:50
Speaker 3: called to do. It's back to that's why we're trying
46:54
Speaker 3: to find a tank to come to a thing, because
46:56
Speaker 3: it's it's almost inseparable as Americans, this idea that William
47:02
Speaker 3: Wallace is actually a better paradigm than Mother Teresa, and
47:08
Speaker 3: it's it's unsettling. I actually think it's sub Christian deeply.
47:13
Speaker 3: But it is the powerful currents I think that we're
47:16
Speaker 3: operating in. And that's why I describe it really as
47:18
Speaker 3: a the powers and principalities that we need to wrestle with,
47:23
Speaker 3: and that those are hard, they're hard to get at,
47:25
Speaker 3: they're hard to unpack, they're hard to undo and unlearned
47:28
Speaker 3: because they're so deeply entrenched and just the background conditions
47:32
Speaker 3: of how we operate.
47:34
Speaker 2: I agree.
47:36
Speaker 1: I think that those powers and principalities yield then different
47:42
Speaker 1: temptations for men and women.
47:44
Speaker 2: And often what I see happening is.
47:49
Speaker 1: As we interact with those, especially as biblical exegetes or
47:55
Speaker 1: culture critics or theologians interact with these things, there's this
47:59
Speaker 1: sort of subtle confusion between what a man needs to
48:04
Speaker 1: do to avoid a certain power and principality in the
48:08
Speaker 1: moment and what it means to be masculine.
48:13
Speaker 2: You know, it's like these things are, they're.
48:15
Speaker 1: Tied together and confused, and so I use the We
48:18
Speaker 1: live near Saint Louis, and I always use this illustration.
48:20
Speaker 1: But when we drive into Saint Louis, we have to
48:22
Speaker 1: pass what I call strip club Row. It's these three
48:26
Speaker 1: lines of strip clubs, and I always think, I'm like,
48:29
Speaker 1: it's interesting to think about this because what the advice
48:32
Speaker 1: I would give my son about those strip clubs is
48:35
Speaker 1: very different than the advice I would get my daughters
48:37
Speaker 1: about those strip clubs, right, because there's not a shot
48:40
Speaker 1: in the world that I think my son is going
48:42
Speaker 1: to end up dancing in one of those clubs right now.
48:45
Speaker 2: I don't think my daughters are going to end up
48:47
Speaker 2: there either.
48:47
Speaker 1: But you know, they have this billboard that says school
48:52
Speaker 1: loans got you down, We're always hiring, and so you
48:57
Speaker 1: just look at that and you go, yeah, they won't
48:59
Speaker 1: end up in that strip.
49:00
Speaker 2: Club, right.
49:01
Speaker 1: But these social pressures, these economic pressures, yield different opportunities
49:08
Speaker 1: for women than they do for men, and that has
49:10
Speaker 1: to be brought out at some point. But I don't
49:13
Speaker 1: think that has anything to do with masculinity and femininity.
49:16
Speaker 1: I think that has to do with the way these
49:18
Speaker 1: powers and principalities structure us into these sort of moments
49:23
Speaker 1: and pressure us to do things that we shouldn't be doing,
49:26
Speaker 1: that are that are dehumanizing in ways and so.
49:31
Speaker 3: And not in doing what we consciously don't want to do.
49:34
Speaker 2: That's right, that's right.
49:37
Speaker 3: It's also it's a really good example because there's both
49:40
Speaker 3: that that, like, we're all very particular, concrete people, that's right,
49:45
Speaker 3: are pressured in different ways by even this inhabiting that
49:47
Speaker 3: same system or space. It's also the case that in
49:53
Speaker 3: sort of the evangelical past, the answer for Christian sort
49:57
Speaker 3: of discipleship is begins in ends with what does your
50:01
Speaker 3: son do and what does your daughter do? To avoid
50:04
Speaker 3: that temptation to you know, be the kind of person
50:06
Speaker 3: that says, no, okay, that's good, that's a good thing.
50:09
Speaker 3: But also Christian discipleship is to address the underlying material
50:14
Speaker 3: conditions that allow sex work to be a viable theory.
50:19
Speaker 3: And we can't so we've shifted so much to the
50:22
Speaker 3: personalized thing that we've forgotten like, oh wait, shouldn't we
50:25
Speaker 3: address the societal structures that we've set up that enable
50:29
Speaker 3: this in the first place? Yeah, it's both and obviously
50:32
Speaker 3: both of those and that's I think when it gets
50:34
Speaker 3: to masculinity, why we need to think in both terms,
50:38
Speaker 3: like how is your son affected by this, and how
50:41
Speaker 3: does he think through the shaping forces of that, and
50:45
Speaker 3: then how do we all collectively go, well, wait a minute,
50:47
Speaker 3: it doesn't have to be this way, Like we can
50:49
Speaker 3: actually address some of those structures if we think systemically
50:52
Speaker 3: about them.
50:54
Speaker 1: Yeah, my son's doing his bachelor's in history and theology
50:58
Speaker 1: right now in Saint Louis, and one of the things
51:01
Speaker 1: we've talked about, he had a class where they talked
51:03
Speaker 1: about sex trafficking, those kind of things, and I just said, yeah,
51:06
Speaker 1: obviously sex trafficking is horrible, like it needs to be curtailed.
51:10
Speaker 1: But I said, we've got these forms that we've become
51:13
Speaker 1: callous to that exist all around us, right, And it's
51:18
Speaker 1: not just the strip clubs, it's internet pornography, it's these
51:20
Speaker 1: kind of things. And I'm like, we have to cultivate
51:22
Speaker 1: a sensitivity to all of these things and an aversion
51:25
Speaker 1: for all of these things, because all of these things
51:28
Speaker 1: are deforming us as humans. I don't think that's a
51:33
Speaker 1: good context in which to say you know, if you
51:36
Speaker 1: you know, to be a real man, you're pushing against
51:39
Speaker 1: these things, right, this is a generative moment for you son,
51:42
Speaker 1: be masculine, you know, push these things out right. It's
51:47
Speaker 1: got to be that moment where we say, look at
51:49
Speaker 1: the way that our culture has decided that these things
51:53
Speaker 1: are good and true and beautiful in ways that God
51:56
Speaker 1: would never ever determine.
51:58
Speaker 3: That.
51:59
Speaker 1: Like, they've been accepted and pulled into our culture in
52:02
Speaker 1: ways that they just shouldn't be. That's not a masculine conversation.
52:06
Speaker 1: That's a discipleship conversation. It's a and you become complicit
52:10
Speaker 1: in it.
52:10
Speaker 3: I mean, I'm I'm reading, you know, with the masculinity
52:13
Speaker 3: side of things, the number of women that are proponents
52:17
Speaker 3: of being traadwives and like wanting to give up, you know,
52:20
Speaker 3: all sorts of stuff. And there they are asking themselves,
52:24
Speaker 3: how do I operate within this system in a way
52:27
Speaker 3: that I can survive? And here's how I'm justifying. So
52:29
Speaker 3: it's like the wait that means you seed all of
52:33
Speaker 3: these things that I don't think you want to want
52:35
Speaker 3: to do. And so yeah, it's that that's where it's like, Okay,
52:39
Speaker 3: we can talk about masculinity but it of course is
52:42
Speaker 3: how does this affect us as a community, as a
52:44
Speaker 3: human society, because it always has those implications. And yeah,
52:49
Speaker 3: I think in each of those different conversations, as we
52:54
Speaker 3: can think about, yeah, what does it mean to be human?
52:57
Speaker 3: And then how do our different particular bodies call us
53:01
Speaker 3: to faithful discipleship and light of that vision of humanity
53:04
Speaker 3: which runs again, if we think christianly about it, not
53:09
Speaker 3: just Jesus, but Jesus is the second person, the trinity.
53:12
Speaker 3: It runs toward people in relation, Like, there's no sense
53:17
Speaker 3: in which my discipleship is detachable from the people that
53:21
Speaker 3: I'm in proximity to, and so it has to somehow
53:25
Speaker 3: account for both of those. Otherwise, yeah, we just perpetuate
53:30
Speaker 3: those same structures that are harming us.
53:34
Speaker 1: I mean, you've written on entertainment and technology and movies
53:36
Speaker 1: and all that kind of good stuff. You've written on
53:38
Speaker 1: psych and this will We're getting close to the end,
53:42
Speaker 1: so I want to I'll make this our last question.
53:44
Speaker 1: But how do you I mean, given everything that we've
53:49
Speaker 1: got going on right now, there's a lot happening, how
53:56
Speaker 1: do you think we need to start re rooting ourselves
54:02
Speaker 1: so that our identity is is more tied to the
54:06
Speaker 1: local church. Obviously our identity needs to be in Christ.
54:09
Speaker 1: But in the concrete sort of let's love our neighbor,
54:13
Speaker 1: let's do this thing in our community, let's you know,
54:16
Speaker 1: let's be together as Christians.
54:18
Speaker 2: What do we need to do to get back there?
54:20
Speaker 2: Other than just hey, do it?
54:23
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know that is part I mean, like, you know,
54:26
Speaker 3: I teach in a seminary and I'm always like, it's tragic. Actually,
54:30
Speaker 3: we now have a huge online student body, which is
54:34
Speaker 3: very different than it was, say, fifteen years ago. Yeah,
54:37
Speaker 3: and so a benefit of that is a larger percentage
54:40
Speaker 3: of our students are still connected to their local congregations. Yea, right,
54:45
Speaker 3: because in the past it's like, man, the number of
54:46
Speaker 3: seminary students that weren't going to church is like, guys,
54:49
Speaker 3: this is scandalous, Like you're sitting for ministry and you're not.
54:52
Speaker 3: You know, so part of me does like I guess,
54:56
Speaker 3: stop and go Okay, it's not as simple as just
54:57
Speaker 3: go do it. But I do think the current moment
55:01
Speaker 3: we're in, there are very few places or resources or
55:06
Speaker 3: even it's not incentivized anywhere to do what a lot
55:11
Speaker 3: of people call conflict transformation or transformative conflict. And I'll
55:16
Speaker 3: often say, like graduate school just is this process where
55:21
Speaker 3: you are exposed to all sorts of ideas that are
55:24
Speaker 3: not yours and conflict with yours and challenge yours. And
55:27
Speaker 3: your job is not to like run away in chaos.
55:30
Speaker 3: It's it's to say, Okay, how do how do I
55:32
Speaker 3: account for them responsibly? How do I humbly accept you know,
55:37
Speaker 3: sometimes correction, but then also not, you know, like you
55:40
Speaker 3: don't have to accept everything, but come back to maybe
55:43
Speaker 3: original position even stronger and more convicted in light of
55:46
Speaker 3: this sort of stuff. So the whole process is this
55:50
Speaker 3: process where you sit with the dissonance of different perspectives,
55:57
Speaker 3: because that's what what we would call education is, that's
56:00
Speaker 3: what growth is, that's what you transformed, renewing of your
56:04
Speaker 3: mind is. And so I think to say simply just
56:08
Speaker 3: go back to church, but I think it's a kind
56:10
Speaker 3: of way of going to church. Maybe been riff on
56:13
Speaker 3: Kennedy right, Ask not what your church can do for you,
56:16
Speaker 3: ask what you really that like, think about it as
56:20
Speaker 3: an opportunity to encounter and expose yourself to the breadth
56:25
Speaker 3: and variety of the Christian faith. That means you have
56:29
Speaker 3: to find a kind of church to do that. But
56:32
Speaker 3: I really think that's the key to how we're going
56:37
Speaker 3: to move forward as as a community. You know the
56:40
Speaker 3: Big Sea or I guess Little Sea church, but all
56:42
Speaker 3: the churches. The only other thing too that I say is,
56:46
Speaker 3: you know, the if it's the bro code and all
56:48
Speaker 3: the stuff, we also have inherited this tendency to basically
56:56
Speaker 3: cut people off and remove each other from community when
57:00
Speaker 3: we get to those times of conflict, like I'm disowning
57:03
Speaker 3: you whatever, and that usually involves a kind of demonizing
57:07
Speaker 3: of this other side that is ultimately unhelpful, even if
57:11
Speaker 3: it's right, even if you like have a read on them.
57:13
Speaker 3: And from the psychological perspective, a big part of I
57:17
Speaker 3: think the shift that needs to happen is instead of asking,
57:22
Speaker 3: and this is like trauma informed therapy, but instead of
57:24
Speaker 3: asking a person like what's wrong with you, to ask
57:28
Speaker 3: what happened to you? So when I go into and
57:31
Speaker 3: it's hard for me to do, but when I go
57:32
Speaker 3: into a conversation with someone who's you know, they're part
57:35
Speaker 3: of the bro code, instead of just going like I
57:38
Speaker 3: already know everything about your perspective and why you're there,
57:42
Speaker 3: to rather say, Okay, what are the deeper fears, anxieties, experiences,
57:48
Speaker 3: longings underlie this conviction that you've arrived at unless I
57:54
Speaker 3: can somehow articulate that or get to there, like having
57:57
Speaker 3: a higher level, you know, conversation about how rational their
58:02
Speaker 3: thoughts are is totally irrelevant unless I can get it
58:05
Speaker 3: that sort of deep, almost intuitive, maybe inarticulate sensibility that
58:10
Speaker 3: this ideology, this perspective is actually addressing. And so that
58:15
Speaker 3: I think is we can say we're going to be
58:16
Speaker 3: around difference all we want, but until we can learn
58:19
Speaker 3: come back to going like, actually am curious about where
58:23
Speaker 3: you're coming from as opposed to I'm here to like
58:25
Speaker 3: convince you to stop being an idiot. That I think
58:30
Speaker 3: is that would be my first step, and it's been
58:32
Speaker 3: really hard, but it is I think cool.
58:37
Speaker 1: Now it's really helpful advice. Well, thank you again, Cutter
58:41
Speaker 1: for being on the show. I think we've covered plenty
58:42
Speaker 1: of ground and hopefully folks enjoyed this. I just encourage
58:47
Speaker 1: everybody to check out the substack, you know, cuttercallaway dot
58:51
Speaker 1: substack dot com. It is the wrong kind of Christian
58:55
Speaker 1: is what you can search and google and then I'll
58:58
Speaker 1: put the link obviously in the show notes.
59:00
Speaker 2: But anything else you'd like to route people to cut her.
59:03
Speaker 3: No, you can go. There are my websites Cuttercallaway dot com.
59:06
Speaker 3: I got a book coming out on the horror genre.
59:08
Speaker 3: So again Ron kind of Christian nice engaged in horror.
59:11
Speaker 3: But yeah, that book's come out in September, so if
59:13
Speaker 3: you want to check it out, you can find all
59:15
Speaker 3: that info on my website. But Cutter with a K,
59:17
Speaker 3: Callaway with a C.
59:19
Speaker 2: Cool.
59:20
Speaker 1: I I got the opportunity, just a dovetail on your horror.
59:22
Speaker 1: I got the opportunity to write an essay in theology
59:26
Speaker 1: religion in the office. It was a volume on the
59:28
Speaker 1: TV show The Office.
59:30
Speaker 2: Super fun. I love that anytime. Yeah it's out.
59:34
Speaker 3: Oh good, I'm gonna pick that up. I love The Office.
59:36
Speaker 3: That's great.
59:37
Speaker 1: Yeah anytime you you know your research involves just rewatching
59:42
Speaker 1: horror movies or old series, It's like, this is the
59:44
Speaker 1: best job ever.
59:45
Speaker 3: It is. I totally agree, totally agree.
59:48
Speaker 1: Are well, Thanksgiv for being here, man, thanks ever for
59:52
Speaker 1: everybody for listening, and we will catch you on the
59:54
Speaker 1: next episode of Thinking Christian Take care. I just want
59:56
Speaker 1: to take a second to thank the team at Life
59:58
Speaker 1: Audio for their partnership with us on the Thinking Christian podcast.
1:00:01
Speaker 1: If you go to lifeaudio dot com, you'll find dozens
1:00:04
Speaker 1: of other faith centered podcasts in their network. They've got
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Speaker 1: shows about prayer, Bible study, parenting, and more.