Speaker 1: Meaning a man like this man letting butterfly, flapping his wing,
Speaker 1: big down in a forest. Man, it gonna cause a
Speaker 1: tree fall, letting five thousand miles away.
Speaker 2: Many nobody see, nobody else see you don't need no man.
Speaker 1: They've like you followed another story and.
Speaker 2: You got backed like that. That's the win. Man got
Speaker 2: back to dag on Panela Man, Man, you don't don't
Speaker 2: better man. Clearly there is a crisis of masculinity. Everyone
Speaker 2: agrees on exactly this. You can look at media going
Speaker 2: back to Fight Club, if not earlier than that, dealing
Speaker 2: with this problem of what do we make of man
Speaker 2: in a post industrial world. Our grandfathers took their meaning
Speaker 2: from work, providing from their families. But in an era
Speaker 2: where more and more women are entering the workfloors, men
Speaker 2: feel unindividuated. We are simply another gear in the machine,
Speaker 2: and not even a unique one. Everyone is doing everything,
Speaker 2: and so what is the purpose of a man? This
Speaker 2: isn't just coming from the political right, particularly after the
Speaker 2: twenty twenty four election, but let's be honest, for decades
Speaker 2: before that, the progressives have been asking what do we
Speaker 2: do with men? What is the role for men? And
Speaker 2: they do not have a good answer. One of the
Speaker 2: most interesting recurring articles of the last four or five
Speaker 2: years is something along the lines of is Hassan Piker
Speaker 2: the lefts Joe Rogan. Now, look, it's a stupid article,
Speaker 2: sort of wish casting, desirous of a authoruthenticity, it's almost
Speaker 2: impossible to create as a man on the progressive left.
Speaker 2: But a big part of it is asking the question, well,
Speaker 2: how can a man be part of our coalition? What
Speaker 2: role can he embody? A few years ago he could
Speaker 2: be vouch, he could be a debate bro, but for
Speaker 2: fairly obvious reasons, he fell out of fashion, and so
Speaker 2: some sort of bizarre himbo moron socialist streamer seems to
Speaker 2: be the best answer they've got. And if you're not that, well,
Speaker 2: I guess you can be Harry Sisson, an effeminate pillowbier.
Speaker 2: But on our side of things, this is a question
Speaker 2: up for debate as well. Figures like Matt Walsh the Turfs,
Speaker 2: they tend to define sex in exclusively biological definitions. A
Speaker 2: man is an adult human male, a woman an adult
Speaker 2: human female. I understand why that definition is one that's
Speaker 2: put forth. We're dealing with the transgender movement. So it
Speaker 2: makes sense, of course, to focus on the biology of it.
Speaker 2: But there's more than that. There are many people who
Speaker 2: meet at criteria have the right chromosomes and they've reached
Speaker 2: the age of majority, but they aren't a man by
Speaker 2: any meaningful metric. Even within the religious world, this has
Speaker 2: become a live issue. I had on Benjamin Michael orthodox
Speaker 2: Luigi not too long ago to talk about the ongoing
Speaker 2: problem with masculinity in the church, and my guest today
Speaker 2: JJ S. Davis has written a very good book on it.
Speaker 2: It is religious, he's Protestant from a similar faith tradition
Speaker 2: to mine. But this book is important to people period
Speaker 2: to men. Sure, you know there's some Bible verses in it,
Speaker 2: but if those offend you, and maybe give him a
Speaker 2: shot and two, you should still read it anyway. He
Speaker 2: lays out a very compelling argument that men have a role,
Speaker 2: they have a purpose, and they need to embody that purpose,
Speaker 2: not simply by virtue of their biology. But there is
Speaker 2: a goal to aim for, there's something to aspire to,
Speaker 2: and that lack of aspirational goal is why I think
Speaker 2: men are retreating from so many institutions. There's no way
Speaker 2: I can see myself succeeding there, there's no path for me.
Speaker 2: I think it's a big reason that young men are
Speaker 2: returning to traditional groups of any stripe, a desire for
Speaker 2: a role, a desire for a reason. The reason I
Speaker 2: said post industrial is because in a previous era, this
Speaker 2: question would be almost ridiculous. It would be obviously apparent
Speaker 2: what the purpose of a man and a woman was.
Speaker 2: We were low enough down on Mouthus's pyramid to understand
Speaker 2: well what we needed to do. No one's gaze again
Speaker 2: to their naval wondering about the purpose of life when
Speaker 2: there's a saber tooth tiger at the door. But as
Speaker 2: we have become more specialized, as we have become more industrialized,
Speaker 2: and as we have become wealthier, well, these questions have arisen.
Speaker 2: And even within the evangelical world, right the nominal conservative Christians,
Speaker 2: they're completely and totally unprepared for it. They are very
Speaker 2: comfortable speaking to women because for the vast majority of
Speaker 2: time religion was female, those were the majority of people
Speaker 2: in the pews. That is no longer the case, and
Speaker 2: so we're seeing a sort of mismatch between well intentioned
Speaker 2: but ultimately foolish ideas. Additionally, many older concerns, and I
Speaker 2: mean that in the widest possible sense of that term,
Speaker 2: are extremely hesitant to bear any sort of social cost whatsoever.
Speaker 2: So when these accusations of toxic masculinity, bigotry, sexism, racism,
Speaker 2: they melt under it because they have been conditioned to
Speaker 2: do so. They don't understand that is tactical, that the
Speaker 2: desire to push young men out of an organization is tactical.
Speaker 2: It is a way to hobble this institution. And it's
Speaker 2: why books like Chases are important because there are many people,
Speaker 2: No doubt, if you're listening to this, you're one of them,
Speaker 2: for whom everything I've said is accepted. With we grew
Speaker 2: up in it, we understand exactly how the game works,
Speaker 2: the fact that this is a conflict one between mutually
Speaker 2: incompatible views of the world. But for those who grew
Speaker 2: up in a time where that was maybe still but
Speaker 2: at least a more hidden truth, books like this are
Speaker 2: absolutely vital. They provide that ramp, that way to go
Speaker 2: from common received wisdom, the things that they have been
Speaker 2: told on network television, to a true understanding of the world.
Speaker 2: And again, if we are going to win, and I
Speaker 2: view that as an existential question whether we win or not.
Speaker 2: For a variety of reasons. Well, we've got to have
Speaker 2: young men. And also, if you are a young man,
Speaker 2: this book is for you. I think many of us
Speaker 2: have felt that feeling of being cast adrift, no idea
Speaker 2: what to do or where to go. And while we
Speaker 2: don't talk about it a lot, in this discussion, we
Speaker 2: get sidetracked. We talk a lot about the fun stuff,
Speaker 2: right kind of bashing the most limbristed quote unquote conservative elite.
Speaker 2: The whole back half of this is a checklist of
Speaker 2: things to do, how to get out of the trap,
Speaker 2: how to reclaim masculinity, and not in the goofy way.
Speaker 2: The masculinity influencer, the guy with the perfectly manicured beard,
Speaker 2: artistically selected tattoos and a TRT prescription that would kill
Speaker 2: a race horse, the Andrew Tates, the Jack Murphy's that
Speaker 2: sort of thing. The other false answer to that question,
Speaker 2: where you transition from a man to an alpha male,
Speaker 2: you become this sort of bizarre, hyper real agglomeration of
Speaker 2: secondary sex characteristics masquerading as a man. And look, don't
Speaker 2: get me wrong, I'm obviously not opposed to physical fitness
Speaker 2: or taking good care of yourself. That's not my point
Speaker 2: at all, But that is not all there is to it.
Speaker 2: It is the same mistake expressed differently as the adult
Speaker 2: human male. Now, obviously there are other traps as well,
Speaker 2: the kind of what Chase calls sex gnosticism, the idea
Speaker 2: that your body and your soul your consciousness are separated,
Speaker 2: that you have a male body, but the spirit is
Speaker 2: completely and totally up to you. You can be in
Speaker 2: the wrong body. But you see that same idea, albeit
Speaker 2: expressed differently in conservative circles, the idea that men and
Speaker 2: women are inherently the same, they think the same, The
Speaker 2: only difference is at best their bench press, or you know,
Speaker 2: their their predilection to acl injury. That also is a mistake,
Speaker 2: one that ultimately seedes ground to the progressives arguing from
Speaker 2: the same logic on a slightly out moded patch. Clearly,
Speaker 2: it's not going anywhere. And this question of masculinity is
Speaker 2: interesting to me because obviously I am, albeit much less
Speaker 2: than I used to be, but a young man. I'm
Speaker 2: less young, hopefully not less of a man than I
Speaker 2: used to be, And I see myself and my peers
Speaker 2: wrestling with that. We feel as if we are out
Speaker 2: of time, the system that is not designed for us,
Speaker 2: not designed for us to succeed, and yet here we are,
Speaker 2: and that's why we must have a confident affirmative. One
Speaker 2: might even say offensive answer to that question. So I'll
Speaker 2: turn it over to the interview with Chase. I think
Speaker 2: it was a good interview book in the description, if
Speaker 2: you're interested, it's well bound. It's a pretty book to
Speaker 2: look at. So if you're one of those people who
Speaker 2: buys books and never reads them, you'll certainly get your
Speaker 2: money's worth out of it. But if you're inclined, i'd
Speaker 2: recommend reading it. I'd recommend buying it maybe for the
Speaker 2: men in your life who were pointed in the right direction,
Speaker 2: whether young or old, but not there yet. As far
Speaker 2: as my stuff, you guys know where to find me. Apple, Spotify, YouTube,
Speaker 2: anywhere you listen to podcasts. If you want to support
Speaker 2: me a few bucks a month on Patreon, Substack or
Speaker 2: gum road, get the episodes early in ad free. The
Speaker 2: ads are irritating, I get it, but I gotta pay
Speaker 2: a mortgage somehow, and that helps me out. Also gets
Speaker 2: you away from Chumba Casino and the other reprobates who
Speaker 2: decide to give me a check in the mail every month. Also,
Speaker 2: if you are interested in the physical fitness side of that,
Speaker 2: something that the author and I discuss, you can head
Speaker 2: over to my sponsor, Axios Remote Fitness Coaching. Actually, I
Speaker 2: think Chase is a member. I see him in the
Speaker 2: group chat every once in a while, so you can
Speaker 2: talk to him there, can talk to me there. And
Speaker 2: JD the guy who runs it, understands these ideas well.
Speaker 2: He is an absolute unit, very good at what he does,
Speaker 2: a lot of expertise, so be sure to take advantage
Speaker 2: of that resource. I think if you follow my link
Speaker 2: you get like two weeks free. I think I should
Speaker 2: know that Axios has been sponsoring me for years now,
Speaker 2: a fairly large portion of my life. And I mean, honestly,
Speaker 2: you should even just feel bad for him because I'm
Speaker 2: I mean me as your advertising. It's not high quality.
Speaker 2: I've been rambling for like two minutes about this and
Speaker 2: I still don't know important details about this scheme. Now
Speaker 2: that said, anyway, here's the interview. All right, Chase Davis,
Speaker 2: Welcome to the Jay Burdens Show. How are you doing?
Speaker 1: Man doing great? Man? Happy to be here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm glad to have you on. You released a
Speaker 2: book Offensive Christianity. I've read it, and you and I
Speaker 2: have some friends in common. Been wanting to get you
Speaker 2: on the show for a long time, and look, this
Speaker 2: was a great excuse. So before we get into it
Speaker 2: in the book, just a little bit of background. Who
Speaker 2: are you and what do you do?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Pastor by vocation, So that's my training is in
Speaker 1: pastoral ministry. I've been a pastor for fifteen years in
Speaker 1: the Great State of Colorado, originally from Texas. Me and
Speaker 1: my wife down in Texas. We moved up to Colorado
Speaker 1: in two thousand and nine and entered into ministry. Got
Speaker 1: a couple of seminary degrees. This is my second book.
Speaker 1: My first book Trinity Information, much much more subdued and
Speaker 1: nuanced that nobody knows about. It was just my thesis
Speaker 1: for my THHM that got published. And then I was
Speaker 1: doing doctoral studies for a while over at the Free
Speaker 1: University of Amsterdam. Recently exited that program once I kind
Speaker 1: of saw AI coming this way and also got the
Speaker 1: opportunity to write this book, which was kind of in
Speaker 1: my research area already, theological anthropology. Besides that, I'm active
Speaker 1: on Substack, have my own podcasts Full Proof Theology. I mean,
Speaker 1: who doesn't. You got to have your own podcast and
Speaker 1: have had a great time over there. I mean it's
Speaker 1: been It's mainly a learning experience for me. I just
Speaker 1: get to meet a bunch of people who I think
Speaker 1: I want to learn more from or I want to
Speaker 1: challenge a little bit or kick around their ideas, and
Speaker 1: so that's been wonderful. But yeah, I'm mainly at the
Speaker 1: Well Church in Boulder, Colorado.
Speaker 2: So primarily this book deals with masculinity. So before we
Speaker 2: get into it, before we get into your thesis, I'm
Speaker 2: curious what led you to this area of research. Why
Speaker 2: is it something that you were interested in learning more about.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was always something in evangelical church, which is
Speaker 1: what I grew up in. I grew up in a
Speaker 1: Southern Baptist church. There was always men's ministry. I went
Speaker 1: to a Christian school. There was always an emphasis on
Speaker 1: being a good man, being a strong man, lots of
Speaker 1: literature when I was coming of age. I guess more
Speaker 1: of my dad now that I think about it was
Speaker 1: coming of age. It was like promise Keepers. That was
Speaker 1: a big movement which was actually started out a boulder,
Speaker 1: come to find out when we moved here. But Promise
Speaker 1: Keepers was big in the nineties and two thousands, and
Speaker 1: there's just been a lot of literature. This isn't the
Speaker 1: first book that's ever been written on the crisis of
Speaker 1: manhood in the Christian West and the late twentieth and
Speaker 1: early twentieth first century, and it probably won't be the
Speaker 1: last either. I think my book is unique and what
Speaker 1: it's proposing as opposed to the others. But this was
Speaker 1: noticed by many many authors. There's been many attempts to
Speaker 1: figure out what's been going on with men, especially in
Speaker 1: the late half of the twentieth century. But for me personally,
Speaker 1: it was more around you know, growing up with a
Speaker 1: good dad who provided for me, who put me in sports,
Speaker 1: put me to Christian school. I there were all these
Speaker 1: kind of tropes about what it meant to be a man,
Speaker 1: what it looked like, and it kind of goes back
Speaker 1: to the word you mentioned, masculinity. For a lot of
Speaker 1: young people today and even older men today, masculinity is
Speaker 1: simply a construct. It's a presentation to the world. It
Speaker 1: is a game of making sure you appear a certain way.
Speaker 1: And I want to get more down to the bare bones,
Speaker 1: into the basics and the design of men biologically, because
Speaker 1: a lot of it becomes very tropy, a lot of
Speaker 1: it becomes very predictable. So I think, as a young man,
Speaker 1: you want to you want to grow up and to
Speaker 1: be a mature, godly man. A lot of times what's
Speaker 1: held out to you or are you know certain hobbies
Speaker 1: you can have, hunting, fishing, these kind of things. You
Speaker 1: go into the military. And then for a lot of
Speaker 1: young sensitive men will say, you know, they don't know
Speaker 1: what to do with a lot of these masculine categories.
Speaker 1: So you know, they're into the arts, poetry, music, stuff
Speaker 1: like this, and they don't really fit the category of that.
Speaker 1: I didn't fit cleanly in either of those council though
Speaker 1: I was interested in music and in athletics. And so
Speaker 1: through the course of twenty eleven twenty twenty, you know,
Speaker 1: I have two sons finding out what it means to
Speaker 1: be a father, wonderful growing experience here, love my sons,
Speaker 1: and then twenty twenty hits and really the problem is
Speaker 1: right open in my mind with transgenderism and a lot
Speaker 1: of the answers that the world is providing both left
Speaker 1: and right felt insufficient and not deep enough in terms
Speaker 1: of answering the question. Like I love Matt Walsh. I
Speaker 1: think he's a really phenomenal communicator. His documentary is great,
Speaker 1: everyone should go watch it on what is a woman?
Speaker 1: But at the end it's like a woman is an
Speaker 1: adult biological female? Good enough, right, But there's got to
Speaker 1: be more to what does it mean to be a
Speaker 1: woman than an adult biological female. And I would say the
Speaker 1: same for men. There's got to be more than both
Speaker 1: kind of a simple textbook definition of what does it
Speaker 1: mean to be a man. It's also got to be
Speaker 1: more than just kind of a trophy. You know, you
Speaker 1: drink beer, you watch football, this kind of stuff, all
Speaker 1: of which I'm not necessarily opposed to in itself. But
Speaker 1: if that's all we're attaching to what our manhood is
Speaker 1: and who we are as men, what we're designed for,
Speaker 1: I think that's insufficient and demonstrably so, I think it's
Speaker 1: been proven to be insufficient to really gird up our
Speaker 1: civilization and the forces of ever increasing darkness that are
Speaker 1: pushing against men, that are suppressing the nature of men.
Speaker 1: And this has bled its way into the church. I'm
Speaker 1: kind of getting thesis a little bit there. But that's
Speaker 1: kind of the background of how I came to this is,
Speaker 1: you know, I just had all these books as a
Speaker 1: young man in the church, like Wild at Heart, which
Speaker 1: I critique in the book, or a famous one was
Speaker 1: Man in the Mirror, and so a lot of these
Speaker 1: conceptions of manhood were very much like Wild a Heart,
Speaker 1: for example, was like a therapeutic man. You know, you
Speaker 1: go and you cry out your daddy wounds, your father
Speaker 1: wounds on a men's retreat, and that's the apotheosis, the
Speaker 1: spiritual climax of what it means to be a man
Speaker 1: is grappling with your father wounds. And I find that
Speaker 1: not only to be kind of a feminine but actually
Speaker 1: counterproductive for a lot of men. They you know, they
Speaker 1: don't understand what that does to them, and how that
Speaker 1: lays up expectations that are kind of unreasonable for men.
Speaker 1: And so that's kind of some of the literature I
Speaker 1: was surrounded by growing up in the church.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so there are a couple things there. There's a
Speaker 2: part of the book I am not going to focus on,
Speaker 2: not because it's there's anything wrong with it, but just
Speaker 2: because I talk about the problems facing young men so
Speaker 2: often that look, you guys, don't need to hear me
Speaker 2: do it again? You know, at a certain point, right,
Speaker 2: how many more times can I tell you things aren't
Speaker 2: good for young men? But on the question of masculinity,
Speaker 2: there are two two broad camps. Which is one masculinity
Speaker 2: is in itself something abusive and horrible that must be expunged.
Speaker 2: You see this in the kind of performative new males,
Speaker 2: the you know, boys who cry phenomenon, the sort of
Speaker 2: leaning into feminization, oftentimes as a sort of sneaky dating strategy,
Speaker 2: but sort of flaunting that. That is one view. The
Speaker 2: other one is the what I call the sort of
Speaker 2: uh transgender males, right, they've transitioned from being males to
Speaker 2: alpha males, where much like the guy in the dress,
Speaker 2: they're so focused on these sort of secondary sex characteristics,
Speaker 2: you know, the like immaculately groomed beard, big muscles, tattoos, chains,
Speaker 2: the bizarre obsession with posture, you know, the green line
Speaker 2: stuff that we all enjoy joking about. But understand, of course,
Speaker 2: there is a real version of that, And okay, maybe
Speaker 2: one is preferable to the other to a degree, but
Speaker 2: clearly these are neither one of these is a functional solution.
Speaker 2: Neither one of these is a sustainable way to live
Speaker 2: or to embody, if I can use that term, what
Speaker 2: it means to be a man. So I'm gonna throw
Speaker 2: some of your own works back at you. Figure he
Speaker 2: might as well start with the central thesis. Christian men,
Speaker 2: stripped of their God given power by a culture that
Speaker 2: reduces manhood to ideas and demands endless empathy, must embrace
Speaker 2: offensive Christianity that boldly asserts authority and action over passive reflection.
Speaker 2: So a couple things there. One, we have that idea
Speaker 2: of God given power, and this is very clearly a
Speaker 2: hot topic in American Christianity. Now, Chase, you and I
Speaker 2: come from a similar faith background. I'm not going to
Speaker 2: get too much into the kind of inter Protestant minutia
Speaker 2: because I think this applies to Christianity writ large. But
Speaker 2: suffice it to say that is a contentious statement, the
Speaker 2: idea that one there is a God given order where
Speaker 2: men have a different role than women. So what's your
Speaker 2: support for that claim?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it's baked into nature. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: not this. What's funny about the book is I keep
Speaker 1: coming across other authors who have spoken on these things.
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh, I've never heard of that person. Not
Speaker 1: because I wanted to ignore outside literature or secondary sources
Speaker 1: or primary sources even, but as like this stuff is
Speaker 1: just apparent on its face. Everyone knew this until like
Speaker 1: five minutes ago. That basically, like men have a power
Speaker 1: about them should assert themselves. This is normal in sports,
Speaker 1: for example. I bring this up all the time, not
Speaker 1: to be redundant, but because it's just a great example
Speaker 1: that when men enter a competitive field, whether it's a
Speaker 1: hockey match, soccer, football, tennis, golf, whatever it is, they're
Speaker 1: gonna want to win. They want to They have a
Speaker 1: competitive drive about them. Women also have a competitive drive.
Speaker 1: This isn't to say that, you know, they don't compete
Speaker 1: as well in their own ways. Men distinctly, though, their
Speaker 1: competitive drive is driven by their biology, by what they're
Speaker 1: by their aspirations, all this cod of stuff. And so
Speaker 1: this idea with power, particularly, it's been kind of beat Evangelicals,
Speaker 1: particularly Protestants, have been beat over the head with either
Speaker 1: a worship of power they just want power, or look
Speaker 1: how bad they are because they have power. Power is
Speaker 1: seen as this like really negative attribute of just human existence.
Speaker 1: Which if you just kind of turn the cube a
Speaker 1: little bit, you're like, this is actually nonsense on its face,
Speaker 1: Like everybody wants power, agency, the ability to change things.
Speaker 1: Power is not inherently bad. It can be misused, of course,
Speaker 1: but like men today often have been so beat over
Speaker 1: the head and beat down with this kind of narrative,
Speaker 1: especially in the church, a lot of churches will trot
Speaker 1: out this idea that having power in and of itself,
Speaker 1: like just having any powers, is inherently problematic or oppressive,
Speaker 1: right because you're kind of over someone else or in
Speaker 1: charge of someone else, responsible for someone else. At the worst,
Speaker 1: of course, it would double into things. We would all
Speaker 1: disavow abuse or anything like this. But power itself is bad.
Speaker 1: It's an idol, and you have to divest yourself of
Speaker 1: your idol of power. And this is reallyhelpful and unproductive language.
Speaker 1: It's sneaky language too, because it diminishes the natural capacities
Speaker 1: of men to assert themselves. And instead, what we want
Speaker 1: to do is have an appropriate use of power. Know
Speaker 1: that we have power, know that we can influence things,
Speaker 1: and then use that productively towards God's glory. It's not complicated,
Speaker 1: but we've made it so complicated because one, the left
Speaker 1: has been attacking evangelical power in America for so long now,
Speaker 1: and two the Church has kind of adopted that talking
Speaker 1: point and said, yeah, it's right, They're right. We are
Speaker 1: ashamed of power, you know, we don't want power. We
Speaker 1: just are here to serve. Of course, the use Bible
Speaker 1: versus justify all this, taking them out of context and
Speaker 1: importing them into the left. It's narrative, but it's not
Speaker 1: only unhelpful, it's harmful to the Church's witness to men,
Speaker 1: particularly because when men do have power, they don't know
Speaker 1: what to do with it. You know, they have no
Speaker 1: concept of like, I'm going to accrue power and wield
Speaker 1: power for God's glory in my lifetime, which is a
Speaker 1: very normal like throughout human civilization, throughout history, this has
Speaker 1: been normal aspiration of men. This is what men do,
Speaker 1: This is how they were made. They have responsibilities and duties.
Speaker 1: There is kind of a natural hierarchy. This is not
Speaker 1: a problem, but we've just bought this kind of weird
Speaker 1: narrative around power that we're either not allowed to have
Speaker 1: it or it's kind of like what you mentioned with
Speaker 1: masculinity is just a problem in and of itself that
Speaker 1: needs to be eradicated.
Speaker 2: So I recently, actually my wife sent me this article
Speaker 2: from the Gospel Coalition, which, Okay, I should have known
Speaker 2: what I was getting into by a guy justin Poithrus,
Speaker 2: I think is how I'm going to say his name
Speaker 2: the title. Again, I knew what I was getting into.
Speaker 2: I knew this was going to make me mad when
Speaker 2: I read it. How evangelicals lose will make all the difference.
Speaker 2: So this article from about three years back is specifically
Speaker 2: critiquing the seven Mountain mandate, which I'll be honest, I've
Speaker 2: never heard of. And does it seem to actually be
Speaker 2: what the article is about. What the article is functionally
Speaker 2: about is it is illegitimate for you, as a conservative
Speaker 2: religious person in America to take any power at all.
Speaker 2: What you should focus on is on losing with grace.
Speaker 2: And it's a great article because that is a through
Speaker 2: line you see and a lot of regime approved conservative
Speaker 2: evangelical thought. But this guy's not smart enough to hide it.
Speaker 2: He just come out and says it. And so much
Speaker 2: of that argumentation is it is being deployed in a
Speaker 2: specific context, right, they're churching it up literally as well.
Speaker 2: As figuratively, but functionally it is power is bad when
Speaker 2: you use it because you are bad, and good when
Speaker 2: me or my friends use it because we're good. So,
Speaker 2: for instance, in this instance, it's saying it's completely illegitimate
Speaker 2: for people to pursue their own self interest. It is
Speaker 2: completely legitimate for for others. Particularly this was during you know,
Speaker 2: kind of one of the big BLM flare ups for
Speaker 2: them to do it. So so much of this attitude
Speaker 2: towards power is, in my mind, it's just a deliberate strategy.
Speaker 2: It's I know you're going to disagree with me, so
Speaker 2: I'd rather you just not even try to begin with.
Speaker 2: And again, this is not to say that there isn't
Speaker 2: an actual discussion to be had about the relationship between
Speaker 2: faith and power, or the relationship between masculinity and femininity,
Speaker 2: but we have to acknowledge a lot of this is
Speaker 2: basically go away and shut up. I don't want you
Speaker 2: to say anything like that, is what so much of
Speaker 2: this discussion is. If you see what I'm saying, Chase.
Speaker 1: No, absolutely, it's very And this is why I have
Speaker 1: no problem saying it's very hypocritical, because often these people
Speaker 1: that are writing these articles or suggesting these ideas do
Speaker 1: have power, right, they do have influence. They are using
Speaker 1: a platform to influence the thoughts of others. That's a
Speaker 1: power move, and that's a choice, and they can do that.
Speaker 1: I have no you know, I discree with their ideas,
Speaker 1: and I I too wish they would not have power
Speaker 1: anymore and suggest their ideas. But such as the nature
Speaker 1: of the world. I see this all the time in
Speaker 1: church world, especially as a pastor. You all pastors who
Speaker 1: are you know, famous, have a large platform or anything
Speaker 1: like that, much larger than me, and they'll get up
Speaker 1: on the stage and lecture you about how you shouldn't
Speaker 1: aspire to have influence, you should aspire a power. You know,
Speaker 1: how dare you want to be a big name or
Speaker 1: anything like this, all while they get like book tours
Speaker 1: and they want evangelical cruises to lecture everybody about how
Speaker 1: they you know, they're not worthy of accruing such influence.
Speaker 1: It's just hypocrisy, and it grosses me out, it should
Speaker 1: grows anyone out. Again, I don't necessarily fault these guys.
Speaker 1: I don't think they're necessarily being nefarious. This guy over
Speaker 1: the Gospel Coalition that you mentioned could be you know,
Speaker 1: a paid well not anymore US eight actor, but he
Speaker 1: could be kind of like a Patsy. But this is
Speaker 1: a known communist strategy, marks a strategy they called the
Speaker 1: clergy the easiest to manipulate. So yeah, when they write
Speaker 1: these articles, and again I haven't delved much into the
Speaker 1: Seven Mountain mandate, I've heard of this trotted out by
Speaker 1: even l or not even jocal outlets left this outlets
Speaker 1: like The New York Times to really like highlight, they're
Speaker 1: always going to find like a bad example, right, Oh,
Speaker 1: this is a prime example of what we're trying to
Speaker 1: get rid of. So let's use the most either egregious
Speaker 1: or kind of warped version of it in order to
Speaker 1: show you how ugly it is in order to suppress
Speaker 1: your instincts for self preservation. And once you kind of
Speaker 1: see the game, it becomes very frustrating because you're trying
Speaker 1: to explain the game to other people, but they're they're
Speaker 1: still very concerned. They give you the concern. Bro. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but like that's a bad movement. I'm like, I'm not
Speaker 1: here to talk about that movement. I don't I know
Speaker 1: very little to nothing about that movement. But it's a
Speaker 1: game that's being played on you. And what they want
Speaker 1: you to do is just be what conservatives have been,
Speaker 1: which is beautiful losers.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: They want you to just accept leftist dominance. Accept you're
Speaker 1: going to live in a box and eat the bugs
Speaker 1: like they will. And they want you they want to
Speaker 1: provide you with a message on Sunday that's basically going
Speaker 1: to placate you into subservience. Right to worry, be a
Speaker 1: stranger in your own land. And this kind of behavior
Speaker 1: from a pastor, from preachers, from evangelical leaders is absolutely
Speaker 1: despicable to me. It's shameful behavior. Again, I don't count
Speaker 1: them as enemies necessarily, but I think they're definitely you know,
Speaker 1: co belligerence with the left when they trot out these ideas.
Speaker 1: And what I want, for the reason I wrote the
Speaker 1: book is not just to critique that, but to give
Speaker 1: a more positive vision. What would it look like to
Speaker 1: actually encourage men and families and women to stand strong
Speaker 1: in the face of cultural forces that are ever encroaching
Speaker 1: upon them that setro wrote their way of life in
Speaker 1: any given nation, whether it's America, England, France, whatever it
Speaker 1: may be, you know, how do we fight this stuff? Well,
Speaker 1: I think for me it comes down to men. We
Speaker 1: need strong, courageous men rooted in Christ using power agency
Speaker 1: influence their propensity to pursue their creation, mandate the domini,
Speaker 1: mandate for God's glory, and to pre tech their families,
Speaker 1: to protect their civilization from forces of darkness, whether that's
Speaker 1: outside forces or forces of Then.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's that tactic, right of Oh, I've found someone
Speaker 2: who nominally agrees with you, who's ikey and gross, therefore
Speaker 2: you are ikey and gross. Again. It's middle school stuff,
Speaker 2: you know, It's not particularly sophisticated, but it works, particularly
Speaker 2: because the evangelical world, whether they want to believe it
Speaker 2: or not, are desperate for approval. You see the same
Speaker 2: thing with like the LDS guys, which don't want to
Speaker 2: start a fight with the Mormons, but they exist in
Speaker 2: this bizarre position of being an outsider and of being
Speaker 2: the butt of every joke for so long that they
Speaker 2: start to act very, very desperate for approval, and so
Speaker 2: they will tie themselves into not trying to form this
Speaker 2: sort of bizarre syncratic mix of general culture and their
Speaker 2: specific faith tradition. Conversation for another time. So the next
Speaker 2: part of your thesis statement talking about obviously the power
Speaker 2: that men have being stripped by a culture that reduces
Speaker 2: manhood to ideas. So this might be my favorite part
Speaker 2: of the book. At least. The thing that really grabbed
Speaker 2: my attention was the way you talk about the link
Speaker 2: between manhood and embodiment. So you mentioned earlier, of course,
Speaker 2: the Matt Walsh documentary reducing a woman to adult human female.
Speaker 2: Obviously tactically when you were talking to it insane troon
Speaker 2: that that argument works, but as a totalizing definition, it
Speaker 2: leaves a lot out there. So I'm curious what is
Speaker 2: your view. I imagine it contrasts with the simply biological,
Speaker 2: the simply sort of Oxford Dictionary description, and why does
Speaker 2: that matter?
Speaker 1: Yeah, men were made for glory. They were meant in
Speaker 1: design to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. This comes
Speaker 1: from the Westminster Catechism, of course, But men are designed
Speaker 1: And this is where you know, you get these and
Speaker 1: I love this kind of stuff, don't. I used to
Speaker 1: kind of cringe at it. But you'll get evangelicals who
Speaker 1: talk about kind of the God shaped hole in your
Speaker 1: heart right or these kind of evangelistic strategies, and it's
Speaker 1: easy to pick on that stuff. But there's actually some
Speaker 1: biblical truth in there. Right, we see in Ecclesiastes in
Speaker 1: many other places that God has set eternity in the
Speaker 1: hearts of men. Men have a desire for this eternal glory, right,
Speaker 1: we watch movies that celebrate it. We want to be
Speaker 1: like Maximus and Gladiator. We want to be the hero
Speaker 1: of the story. Obviously, Christ is the hero of the story.
Speaker 1: And yet we all have our own journey. We all
Speaker 1: have control and agency our own life and where we're
Speaker 1: going to end up to under God's providence and sovereignty.
Speaker 1: And we should turn to Christ so that we can
Speaker 1: enjoy that glory forever and ultimately relish in His beauty
Speaker 1: and majesty. But that itself is the destination men. That
Speaker 1: is what men were built for, and by a log
Speaker 1: they were fit for the task of not just being
Speaker 1: hungry for glory, but being vice regents in the world,
Speaker 1: and so their very bodies cry out for dominion. There's
Speaker 1: a there's a sense of expansiveness to men where they
Speaker 1: want to take over. They want to like have, whether
Speaker 1: it's your you're a sales rep and you want to
Speaker 1: you know, crush the competitors, or you're a political figure
Speaker 1: and you want to ascertain national sovereignty. This is natural
Speaker 1: biologically to men. This of course gets corrupted by the
Speaker 1: fall biologically, but those biological propensities don't go away, they
Speaker 1: just get warped. They get corrupted, so that men now
Speaker 1: sin and very great capacities because of their power and authority.
Speaker 1: This is why the majority and not to get on
Speaker 1: prisons or anything like this, but the majority of crime
Speaker 1: is committed by men, right, The majority of dangerous jobs
Speaker 1: men do, the majority of murder, and the prison population
Speaker 1: is men. It because men have naturally been imbued with
Speaker 1: a sense of dominion and agency and power where they
Speaker 1: want to influence, They want to change things. They see
Speaker 1: something that is unmade and they want to make it
Speaker 1: better or in the negative way, and sometimes it's necessary
Speaker 1: to kind of burn the ship, so to speak. But
Speaker 1: you also want to change things. You want to make
Speaker 1: the system different or make your life different, and you
Speaker 1: can do those things. But men were fit biologically for
Speaker 1: glory and ultimately to find glory in God.
Speaker 2: First of all, and by extension. Sorry, my book was
Speaker 2: resting on the mute button, so that's probably scuffed. But
Speaker 2: both the conservative and the evangelical world are very quick
Speaker 2: to assert that women are not defective men, which is true. However,
Speaker 2: they are very quick to, whether implicitly or explicitly, assume
Speaker 2: that men are dysfunctional women. We see this in education,
Speaker 2: for example, even at Christian schools, and you know what,
Speaker 2: I'm the product of that. I feel like I had
Speaker 2: a very good education there. But they are similarly biased
Speaker 2: against young men in the way that the day is scheduled,
Speaker 2: the kind of punishment of certain infractions. But we see
Speaker 2: the same thing sort of echoed throughout the conservative and
Speaker 2: evangelical world. So you see this expectation that to be godly,
Speaker 2: or to be particularly devout, you have to effectively act
Speaker 2: like your in therapy at all times, right, that is
Speaker 2: the appropriate way to interact one to another. And it
Speaker 2: kind of very sort of I guess you would say,
Speaker 2: overly emotional, hyper sort of confessing way, not in the
Speaker 2: Christian sense of that word, and sort of a more
Speaker 2: kind of talk therapy, sitting down on the couch sense.
Speaker 2: And I find that dissonance really irritating. It's like, okay, yeah,
Speaker 2: I agree with you on that premise. Women are not
Speaker 2: faulty men. Seemingly the converse should be true as well.
Speaker 2: Right if these are two distinct categories, each with its
Speaker 2: own sort of I guess you could say God given
Speaker 2: roles and gifts, then it stands to reason both of
Speaker 2: those things are important. And in this book you use
Speaker 2: a term that I particularly like, called sex gnosticism. I
Speaker 2: appreciate the brief aside where you talk about how gnosticism
Speaker 2: might be one of the most myths and overused terms
Speaker 2: because it equally gets on my nerves. So just a
Speaker 2: brief aside there, But what do you mean when you
Speaker 2: talk about sex gnosticism? Because it was a great term,
Speaker 2: and as soon as I read it, I was like, oh,
Speaker 2: that's exactly what you were describing so manyay, I'll kick
Speaker 2: it back to you jays.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's kind of this acting like one on the
Speaker 1: one hand, we can't know the differences on the soul
Speaker 1: level between men and women. It's kind of like not colorblind,
Speaker 1: but sex blind. And on the other hand, yet the
Speaker 1: sex determines truth, and so you'll get, you know, lived
Speaker 1: experience type language that kind of trumps any kind of
Speaker 1: outside knowledge or base reality about what it means to
Speaker 1: be a man. So like this is the typical kind
Speaker 1: of female way of reasoning. You'll say a general statement
Speaker 1: about a population and they'd be like, well, that's not
Speaker 1: true for everyone, right, So it's just kind of a
Speaker 1: defense mechanism where we can't know anything, and yet we
Speaker 1: can also have full authority to speak to everything at
Speaker 1: the same time. So there's this kind of willing blindness
Speaker 1: about the differences, where we're blind to differences between the sexes,
Speaker 1: and yet we assert kind of these general things, like
Speaker 1: you mentioned that men are somehow defunct women, and this
Speaker 1: has been trotted out since the Victorian era. Specifically, I
Speaker 1: know some I was listening to something the other day
Speaker 1: where somebody connects it to Bernard of Clairvaux, where I
Speaker 1: think it was Albert Mohler, maybe I don't remember, But basically,
Speaker 1: the turn from spirit virtuality being an outward kind of obedience, conformity,
Speaker 1: religious behavior with duties attendant duties fitting to your station
Speaker 1: and your sex, to an inward personal experience. And I
Speaker 1: go into this in great detail on the book. I
Speaker 1: of course am tying it back to kind of Enlightenment
Speaker 1: reasoning and rationalism and romanticism and Pietism, all this kind
Speaker 1: of stuff. But there's this kind of a willing blindness
Speaker 1: where we can't talk about the differences, and if we do,
Speaker 1: we're somehow like bigots or something like this. This is
Speaker 1: just nonsense. Those are just magic words that people try
Speaker 1: out to try to get you to be quiet. And
Speaker 1: so instead what we should do is just honor the
Speaker 1: distinct nature of men and women, you know. And a
Speaker 1: lot of people, even by talking about this, they're like, well,
Speaker 1: that's demeaning to women. I'm like, I literally have said
Speaker 1: no thing I have in the book. I thoroughly say
Speaker 1: that women themselves are valuable to the Lord. They have
Speaker 1: a place in this great civilizational test, this great kingdom work,
Speaker 1: you could say, to expand God's kingdom. They're fundamental and
Speaker 1: essential to the propagation of the human race for first
Speaker 1: of all with them being able to bear children, but
Speaker 1: also but they're also you know, uniquely designed. That's why
Speaker 1: Eve was creative for Adam to be. Has helped me
Speaker 1: to come alongside him and accomplish things. And uh, I
Speaker 1: don't go into a lot of detail on women in
Speaker 1: the book, not because I wish to ignore them. I'm
Speaker 1: speaking to men. I want men to remember who they are,
Speaker 1: remember why they as a young boy, had these instincts,
Speaker 1: and to know that like, yes, your education, yes, your
Speaker 1: college and university, yes, culture and movies and propaganda, and yes,
Speaker 1: even sometimes your church has told you those basic instincts
Speaker 1: to protect, to provide, to win, to achieve that desire
Speaker 1: for glory you have. Those are not necessarily wrong instincts.
Speaker 1: They may be directed towards bad ends, but we want
Speaker 1: men to be creatures that God made them to be,
Speaker 1: to pursue glory, To go out and try to take
Speaker 1: a risk, make something of yourself, stand up and you know,
Speaker 1: stand for your own family, your own religion, and not
Speaker 1: bow in the faces of these cultural pressures. We're recording
Speaker 1: as of now during the you know, this secular high
Speaker 1: Holy month, the secular Ramadan, the Pride month, where they
Speaker 1: trod out this perversion out there, and many Christians just
Speaker 1: kind of go like, oh, you know, I'm not going
Speaker 1: to speak about it. I don't want to offend. And
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh, my goodness, we're so far gone. We're
Speaker 1: so far gone. I don't believe all is lost. But
Speaker 1: this kind of attitude is really shameful in terms of
Speaker 1: when we look at our history and what we're made
Speaker 1: for men should be the front lines speaking up about
Speaker 1: the truth of marriage, about the beauty of women and
Speaker 1: what they were made for, about what men were made for,
Speaker 1: and assuming leadership roles and asserting themselves and really not
Speaker 1: bothering themselves with all the naysayers and the narratives that
Speaker 1: are kind of foisted upon them by the world which
Speaker 1: seeks to suppress their nature.
Speaker 2: So the next section of your thesis statement strikes at
Speaker 2: something absolutely pivotal, which is the role of quote unquote empathy.
Speaker 2: And we mentioned earlier the sort of double standard around power.
Speaker 2: We see something very similar with empathy. So, for instance,
Speaker 2: there's limitless empathy for certain crimes, for instance, you know
Speaker 2: less than optimal past sexual behavior, a whole number of
Speaker 2: different left wing policies where if you are, let's be honest, rude,
Speaker 2: if you say something you're not supposed to in sort
Speaker 2: of a right word direction, you were cast into a
Speaker 2: proverbial lake of fire. You become a shudra, an untouchable
Speaker 2: if you will. So that being said, why is empathy
Speaker 2: important in this discussion? Why is it something that bears
Speaker 2: mentioned Because at least right off rip, you'd assume, well,
Speaker 2: other than passing mention, why is it important to talk
Speaker 2: about empathy in a book about men? Right, it's not
Speaker 2: normally a trade associated.
Speaker 1: With Yeah, it really is not a trade associated with them.
Speaker 1: And even biologically, most men find it rather distasteful kind
Speaker 1: of to engage in kind of these empathy games. And
Speaker 1: there's good instincts that men have to not look at
Speaker 1: perversion in society and think I should have compassion on that. Right. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: a lot of even jocals using concepts again kind of
Speaker 1: trophy phrases like well, we want to love the sin,
Speaker 1: or love the sin or hate the sin. This is
Speaker 1: common refrain, and it muddles the brain. It gets in
Speaker 1: there like a mind virus and makes them incapable of
Speaker 1: reasoning through things. And all of a sudden, now we
Speaker 1: can't punish sin, or even punish crime for that matter.
Speaker 1: We have to be endlessly empathetic. We have to listen
Speaker 1: to others and listen and learn endlessly about other people's experience.
Speaker 1: And this is just the common narrative. It gets also
Speaker 1: into my section on niceness, how basically the end all
Speaker 1: be all for a man is to just be nice.
Speaker 1: Be nice. Seriously, the leftist kind of redditor will say,
Speaker 1: be a decent human being, you know, this kind of
Speaker 1: this kind of stuff. And so the idea there is
Speaker 1: like we're going to be empathetic. It's incredibly hypocritical. They're
Speaker 1: never empathetic to the right. You know, they constantly are
Speaker 1: are unpersoning people who are threatening people with heinous crimes.
Speaker 1: If you mentioned anything about natural order or hierarchy or
Speaker 1: any kind of these things, or speak up at a
Speaker 1: pulpit about these matters, you know, they're going to try
Speaker 1: to come after you. But no, we have to be
Speaker 1: empathetic to any kind of crime, perversion in society, or
Speaker 1: people who practice false religion publicly. We have to be empathetic,
Speaker 1: don't you understand. You know, that's just their culture. That's
Speaker 1: how they were raised. These people that come over and
Speaker 1: you know, play play music on their iPhones on speakerphone,
Speaker 1: on public transportation or in public at Walgreens, they're just
Speaker 1: walking around and this is just their culture. That's how
Speaker 1: they're raised. And it's like, no, it's like we can
Speaker 1: just not like that, Like we don't have to just
Speaker 1: like empathize with Well, that's just their lived experience which
Speaker 1: is trotted out so often, and so for me, it
Speaker 1: comes down a lot to authenticity, which I also critique
Speaker 1: in the book, kind of the paradigm of living your
Speaker 1: true self, kind of the disneyfication of evangelicalism, where like
Speaker 1: the gold standard of spiritual maturity is being authentic, but
Speaker 1: you can be authentically good, authentically evil. Authenticity is a
Speaker 1: negligible term that has really no attachment to virtue. You
Speaker 1: want to be sincere, but even sincerity is again, you
Speaker 1: could be heinously evil and very sincere about it. So
Speaker 1: it's not necessarily a virtue that we're supposed to embody.
Speaker 1: But because of this kind of empathy game, most people
Speaker 1: just hear sincerity or earnestness in someone and they're like, well,
Speaker 1: I should listen to them. We should listen and learn
Speaker 1: from everyone.
Speaker 2: I mean, say what you will chase. At least Genghis
Speaker 2: Khan was living his true you know, there's no self delusion.
Speaker 1: There was very sincere and earnest warlord.
Speaker 2: Sincerely want to remove your head from your body and
Speaker 2: turn it into a pyramid of skull. I mean lying
Speaker 2: to you well again, right, that is something that to
Speaker 2: your point, has really crippled a lot of Christian institutions
Speaker 2: because it and these people, whoever you, whoever they are
Speaker 2: in your brain, are very adept at this, which is
Speaker 2: taking a charitable inclination, right, a desire to do the
Speaker 2: right thing, and weaponizing it against fundamentally good people, A
Speaker 2: term I don't particularly like due to the fact that
Speaker 2: John Calvin's been beaten into my brain, but functionally will
Speaker 2: go with it. Right, But in all seriousness, evangelicals need
Speaker 2: to wrestle with the fact that effectively, what a state
Speaker 2: does not punish, it condones that simply by refusing to
Speaker 2: speak out, by sort of looking the other way, by
Speaker 2: sort of obsessing with bringing in more people, but you know,
Speaker 2: widening the gate, sort of decreasing the barrier to entry. You're,
Speaker 2: by extension, putting your stamp of approval on those bad behaviors.
Speaker 2: One of the most interesting demographic trends, and albeit this
Speaker 2: is still small numbers, but it is sharply departing from
Speaker 2: a long term trend, is that more young men are
Speaker 2: going to churches, particularly very traditional churches. Obviously the Orthodox
Speaker 2: are exploding, the TLM guys are growing. My own church
Speaker 2: and others like it are also seeing dramatic increases in
Speaker 2: predominantly young men, and I think at least. A big
Speaker 2: part of that is that guys are looking for something
Speaker 2: that requires something of them, that is hard, that is difficult.
Speaker 2: So many of these institutions are focused on being welcoming,
Speaker 2: letting anyone in the gate. And if something is for everyone,
Speaker 2: it's sort of for no one. And this endless mass
Speaker 2: market appeal, like we've seen with entertainment, like we've seen
Speaker 2: with every other aspect of culture, has produced just sort
Speaker 2: of gray, unindividuated slop, just absolute nothing. And look, is
Speaker 2: there a time and place for empathy, Sure, but be
Speaker 2: very cautious when someone brings that up. There's a section
Speaker 2: in this book that made me very, very angry. It's
Speaker 2: a quote you pulled from John Piper talking about how
Speaker 2: if a man in a ski mask broke into his
Speaker 2: house and was intent on violating his wife, he wouldn't
Speaker 2: do anything. It's like, I wouldn't want to be mean,
Speaker 2: I wouldn't want to be rude. I'm empathizing with that person,
Speaker 2: you know, I wouldn't want to cause them harm. And Okay,
Speaker 2: that's a ridiculous example, ridiculous enough that he deleted it
Speaker 2: at the very least. But oftentimes empathy is an excuse
Speaker 2: it is an excuse to externalize problems away from me
Speaker 2: to other people. So I don't want to feel icky
Speaker 2: or gross or like the bad guy. So I'll just
Speaker 2: keep letting this problem exist because it doesn't directly affect
Speaker 2: me all while these people have the ability to cast
Speaker 2: themselves as morally superior. Far from it. This is just
Speaker 2: a deferral. Right. You were externalizing the consequences to someone else,
Speaker 2: a behavior we see all too often. So props to
Speaker 2: you for putting that example. And it did exactly what
Speaker 2: it was supposed to do, which is one convinced me
Speaker 2: you were right, and two made me very angry at
Speaker 2: the guy who put forth that original article.
Speaker 1: Yeah you're welcome.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: No, Piper is somebody I have his books on my
Speaker 1: shelf I've learned a great deal from. But his attitude
Speaker 1: on this topic I find to be pervasive, And I
Speaker 1: find it to not just be pervasive, but emblematic of
Speaker 1: the evangelical mood for many kind of striver churches like
Speaker 1: you mentioned that are kind of obsessive over being welcoming
Speaker 1: at nauseum to where they have no self respect. They're
Speaker 1: kind of the pigmy church. They're the desperate for approval church.
Speaker 1: I remember a few years ago our church got kicked
Speaker 1: out of a location we're renting because we stood on
Speaker 1: the Bible on marriage and sexuality. It's in our statement
Speaker 1: of faith. You can find it boulderwell dot org find
Speaker 1: our statement of faith. And simply because some redditors and
Speaker 1: leftists had found it, they put pressure on the business.
Speaker 1: The business canceled our lease. I talked with a bigger
Speaker 1: name evangelical leader in our context and he was like,
Speaker 1: you know, we're getting op eds written negatively about our church.
Speaker 1: They were calling us things like, you know, we're trying
Speaker 1: to be the Christian Taliban or something like this. And
Speaker 1: I was like, this is not ideal. This is not
Speaker 1: what people want, you know, and my church members aren't
Speaker 1: going to enjoy if they have to go to work.
Speaker 2: Does the Christian Taliban like, is there a tryout process
Speaker 2: or is here?
Speaker 1: I have no idea, No message me on Twitter and
Speaker 1: ask about it.
Speaker 2: Sorry.
Speaker 1: So you know, I'm thinking, as a pastor, we've got
Speaker 1: a congregation we're trying to shepherd. These kind of spurious
Speaker 1: and slanderous accusations are being launched at a church they're
Speaker 1: associated with. You know, what do we need to do
Speaker 1: local evangelical thought leader Big Leader. He's like, you need
Speaker 1: to launch an initiative. I'm like, okay, tell me more.
Speaker 1: You need to launch an initiative called Love Boulder, and
Speaker 1: it needs to be, you know, a very positive vision
Speaker 1: for the city. How you're welcoming to people, how you're
Speaker 1: not what they say you are. And I was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't think that's our speed. Man, Like that's the
Speaker 1: typical evangelical response, though, is you know, we we have
Speaker 1: to kind of placate and put up with whatever they
Speaker 1: say about us and then prove to them, based on
Speaker 1: spurious allegations and spurious slanders and implications of what we believe,
Speaker 1: all of this, we have to prove to them are
Speaker 1: our morality. And I'm like, we're done. That's over. I'm
Speaker 1: not here to prove to people who are sinners that
Speaker 1: I myself am not a sinner. Like that's not that's
Speaker 1: not a game that's winnable. I'm here to preach the
Speaker 1: Gospel to raise up families in Christ and I'm not
Speaker 1: playing to lose and to see my children and here
Speaker 1: a future where it's worse for them than it is
Speaker 1: for me. And so the Piper example is very useful
Speaker 1: because it's very, like I said, emblematic of a passivity
Speaker 1: that is rampant in evangelicals where they don't want to
Speaker 1: assert themselves. They if you talk to an evangelical and
Speaker 1: mention something like we're going to impose our will on
Speaker 1: our opponents, they would be like, oh, my goodness, that
Speaker 1: is so on Christ, Like, you know, that's just their
Speaker 1: natural way of thinking. And I'm trying to get them
Speaker 1: back to the Bible. And God's designed for men to say,
Speaker 1: not only is it normal that you want to win,
Speaker 1: but it's also like good because you know Christ, that
Speaker 1: you should want evil to be stopped. These are like
Speaker 1: it's it's almost laughable that that would be controversial at
Speaker 1: all in our day, but that that's like normal human experiences,
Speaker 1: normal for Christians. And they'll use all sorts of Bible
Speaker 1: verses to justify kind of this subservience. They want this dimitude,
Speaker 1: this cultural dimitude, this kind of endless like martyrdom, and
Speaker 1: that that to them is like the chief end of
Speaker 1: man is to be martyred, is to live in dimitude,
Speaker 1: because then at least we're pure. And I'm like, this
Speaker 1: is despicable behavior. Martyrdom may come. Okay, martyrdom can happen.
Speaker 1: Persecution it happened. That's not something we should pursue as
Speaker 1: a policy. That's that's asinine.
Speaker 2: Well, and let's let's be honest here, Well, what type
Speaker 2: of martyred. It's a really easy, comfortable form, you know,
Speaker 2: it's not sort of being fed toliance. It's well, I've
Speaker 2: just contorted myself so that I can still go to
Speaker 2: a country club without getting dirty looks. You know, it's
Speaker 2: not exactly, you know, allowing yourself to be flayed to death,
Speaker 2: you know, something quite that dramatic, and it reminds me
Speaker 2: very much of the you know, the kind of like
Speaker 2: old you know, moral quandary. You know, should you should
Speaker 2: you sell your children into slavery to feed the poor,
Speaker 2: which is, you know, on its face, sort of ridiculous example,
Speaker 2: but it's the same thing, right, It's like, should I
Speaker 2: sacrifice someone else to increase the net amount of utility
Speaker 2: in the world? You know, there more people are more
Speaker 2: happy because I did this. And obviously the counter is no,
Speaker 2: because that's not real charity. That's not your decision to
Speaker 2: make right. You were ruining someone else's life. And yet
Speaker 2: this is exactly what is happening, Like, Okay, sure it's
Speaker 2: not literal slavery, although you know, look at advances in
Speaker 2: the modern economy, it's at least close enough. But to
Speaker 2: then cast that decision, it's the morally correct, the only
Speaker 2: acceptable way to act. It's absolutely totally infuriating. And if
Speaker 2: there's one idea I could get across two conservatives, it's this,
Speaker 2: if you are a threat to the progressives, they will
Speaker 2: never stop attacking you, no matter what. Whatever thing they
Speaker 2: yell at you probably won't even be true, but they
Speaker 2: will keep attacking you until you are no longer a threat.
Speaker 2: And let's be honest a little bit after that. That
Speaker 2: is the one way to get them to go away,
Speaker 2: which is to show them your belt right, to become
Speaker 2: completely totally subservient and non threat. And if you accept that, hey,
Speaker 2: we are enemies, we have a different view on things.
Speaker 2: They're not gonna like you. It's sort of core to
Speaker 2: the conception of enmity. They are going to want you
Speaker 2: to go away. You sort of have to steel yourself
Speaker 2: to that. There's really no way to get out of
Speaker 2: that without becoming a demi, a vassal. They're ruder words
Speaker 2: for that, but we'll leave it there. Those are your
Speaker 2: two options. Either you're going to get called mean names
Speaker 2: or you're going to get absorbed by the blob. There's
Speaker 2: really nothing else. And particularly with older people, I think
Speaker 2: there is a desire to return to an era in
Speaker 2: which they could hold their small orthodox beliefs and not
Speaker 2: face any consequences for it. And I get it. I
Speaker 2: would like to live in a world where that was
Speaker 2: the case, but fundamentally we don't live there. And in
Speaker 2: order to get back to that, you might have to
Speaker 2: be just the tiniest bit meat. You might have to
Speaker 2: be a little bit intransigent, you might have to say
Speaker 2: no to someone, and a lot of people are really
Speaker 2: uncomfortable with that. Fundamentally, don't shoot the messenger. Okay, I'm
Speaker 2: twenty seven. I didn't make this world. I was born
Speaker 2: into it. So our two options are either I was
Speaker 2: gonna use a rude word, We're gonna say, be a
Speaker 2: demi to the regime, or get called me names. And
Speaker 2: that's pretty much what it comes down to. Jase.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I mean that goes back to the top
Speaker 1: of my book, be willing to be an offensive Christian,
Speaker 1: And again I try to nuance it on every podcast,
Speaker 1: just to be exceptionally clear, like I'm not calling for
Speaker 1: you to go out and just pick fights for the
Speaker 1: sake of picking a fight, or to offend where we
Speaker 1: shouldn't offend or anything like that. We don't want to,
Speaker 1: you know, become uncivil. But the deal is with liberalism
Speaker 1: is that one of the chief kind of if you
Speaker 1: want to need these the word idols or ideals of
Speaker 1: liberalism is this civility. We want to live in a
Speaker 1: civil society. We want, you know, ideally you're talking about
Speaker 1: these older people, they want less crime, They want everybody
Speaker 1: to get along. You know, I think about I'm a parent,
Speaker 1: I have kids. I would like for them to get along.
Speaker 1: That would be nice, you know. But my son's are
Speaker 1: rivals in some ways. They have a competition in them
Speaker 1: and they want to be better than each other, and
Speaker 1: they love each other. But that's just natural to how
Speaker 1: they are. And so this worship of civility really tamps
Speaker 1: a lot of male suppression to get out there and
Speaker 1: speak their mind, to be honest with what they believe. Again,
Speaker 1: we need to encourage young men and Christian men particularly
Speaker 1: be shrewd and cunning and wise and mature. These are
Speaker 1: Christian teachings that I'm teaching right now through overbs at
Speaker 1: my church. We want people to be wise and know
Speaker 1: the times. Part of that wisdom means, like you said,
Speaker 1: soberly assessing the times we live in. And like you said,
Speaker 1: if we if we live in a time where the
Speaker 1: left is going, if they, you know, catch you as
Speaker 1: an actor publicly or even in private that stands especially
Speaker 1: on God's word that is unbending on those things, they're
Speaker 1: going to do everything they can to harm you. And
Speaker 1: like you said, it's it may not be martyred them
Speaker 1: and it may not be beheading, but they're going to
Speaker 1: just slander your name such that when somebody looks up
Speaker 1: your name or looks up your repetition, they're gonna they're
Speaker 1: going to essentially try to make you unemployable. And so
Speaker 1: I think it's really interesting because a lot of Christians
Speaker 1: they have in their mind kind of like I'm willing
Speaker 1: to die for Christ. We should be willing to die
Speaker 1: for Christ. Martyrdom is you know, they're okay, yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna face the lions for Christ. But when it comes
Speaker 1: to lesser forms of persecution, they're like, yeah, but that's
Speaker 1: too that would cost me, you know, convenience is or
Speaker 1: comfort or you know, worst case I could get debanked
Speaker 1: or something like this, and they're not willing to do that,
Speaker 1: And it's like, what makes you think you're going to
Speaker 1: go to further forms of persecution if you're not willing
Speaker 1: to do that. And it's often done under the name
Speaker 1: of just trying to like play a game or like survive,
Speaker 1: and it typically doesn't go well. It just doesn't go well.
Speaker 1: Christians need to embrace an offensive Christianity, one that's forthright
Speaker 1: about what we believe, unflinching in the face of opposition,
Speaker 1: and also links together and networks together with other resources,
Speaker 1: because it can be very lonely if you are a Christian,
Speaker 1: especially in a more democrat context a bluer context, it
Speaker 1: can feel very lonely for many people, where it's like,
Speaker 1: am I going crazy? Am I the only one in
Speaker 1: the world who feels this way? I might find people online,
Speaker 1: but it sure would be nice to have people in
Speaker 1: real life who if I lost my job or if
Speaker 1: I needed help, I could count on them and I
Speaker 1: know they wouldn't try to corrupt my children or my
Speaker 1: family if I needed them to come into my life
Speaker 1: in a significant way, and so ultimately conservatives, but particularly Christians,
Speaker 1: need to link arms together to encourage one another, to
Speaker 1: provide resources to one another, to to form what I
Speaker 1: call in the Book of Phalanx of Christians who can withstand,
Speaker 1: because many of us are tempted in a variety of
Speaker 1: ways to either bow or capitulate, or give in or
Speaker 1: just not speak when we should speak. And I'm like, no,
Speaker 1: we should. We should be speaking more. That takes training.
Speaker 1: You're gonna have to use your voice. You're gonna fail sometimes.
Speaker 1: But we need to trust Christ and we need to
Speaker 1: carry forward his truth into the world rather than shirking back.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean at the risk of, you know, kicking
Speaker 2: a dead horse. Look, I don't know if I believe
Speaker 2: you that you're willing to be you know, sawn in
Speaker 2: half when you sort of falter when someone calls you
Speaker 2: a mean name, or I don't know, you seem to
Speaker 2: falter it like I don't know, the like Bob Evan's
Speaker 2: buffet line, you know, like sorry, I don't necessarily believe
Speaker 2: you have the will to make that call. So a
Speaker 2: couple things I want to get on to. The proscriptive,
Speaker 2: the sort of positive vision realised We've spent roughly fifteen
Speaker 2: minutes complaining about American evangelicals, which you know is a
Speaker 2: pass off of mine. That are my people. I love them,
Speaker 2: but also boys, sometimes you don't make it easy to
Speaker 2: love you. So you lay out a couple of different
Speaker 2: sort of active decisions that can be made. There. One
Speaker 2: of them you mentioned to sort of form a FAILAX FAILANX, right,
Speaker 2: get a group together. What are other ways that men
Speaker 2: who've been convinced by your thesis can solve that issue?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think a big one for young Krishiaan men
Speaker 1: today is going to be figuring out what to do
Speaker 1: with their resentment and bitterness. Resentment and bitterness is almost
Speaker 1: always left coded. It's especially Marxist coded. It's rooted in covetousness.
Speaker 1: And for the audience member who's listening, I go on
Speaker 1: to great detail in the book of how I'm sympathetic
Speaker 1: with legitimate reasons you could face that temptation. Right, there's
Speaker 1: all sorts of pressures again to you. But bitterness never
Speaker 1: produces the virtue that we aspire, the glory that we
Speaker 1: aspire to achieve, and so bitterness is going to corrode
Speaker 1: your soul. It's going to eat you alive, and that resentment,
Speaker 1: that kind of boiling energy where you're looking around you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's almost never productive towards God's and said, we
Speaker 1: need to be productive, and we need to figure out
Speaker 1: how to deal with what we've got to deal with now.
Speaker 1: The other thing I get into at great length is
Speaker 1: biology and getting fit. There's a lot of talk online
Speaker 1: and other places about kind of the fitness industry, particularly
Speaker 1: in male spaces, about you know, whether it's peptides or
Speaker 1: bench press or you know, running, whatever it is. But
Speaker 1: I think a big problem in our world is not
Speaker 1: merely that people don't know the Lord, although of course,
Speaker 1: as a minister and acres a Christian, I think that
Speaker 1: is the pre imminent problem. The other problems are a
Speaker 1: lot of them are iological. So a lot of the
Speaker 1: things that we get diagnosed with today, whether it's anxiety
Speaker 1: or depression or ADHD, a lot of them we know
Speaker 1: now may simply be hormonal imbalances, dietary issues, the fact
Speaker 1: that you're seedentary, the fact that you are overweight, and
Speaker 1: a lot of your life can be improved and your
Speaker 1: agency will be improved as you, for example, get your
Speaker 1: testosterone levels improved, So if we if we have a
Speaker 1: mass decline of testosterone among men in America, and this
Speaker 1: is evangelicals are men in America evan jocalmen, you know,
Speaker 1: then it wouldn't be surprising that you're going to find
Speaker 1: low T men. You're going to find low T men
Speaker 1: in the pulpit. You're going to find men who are
Speaker 1: kind of acting more feminine and their dispositions and outlook.
Speaker 1: They're going to shape institutions, They're going to shape seminaries,
Speaker 1: they're going to shape the gospel coalition, They're going to
Speaker 1: shape you know, worship whatever it may be, and the
Speaker 1: sermons and all that. One of the key ways that
Speaker 1: I think we can recover kind of this agenic kinetic
Speaker 1: fuma for men is by getting men to not get ontoesosterone,
Speaker 1: but to at least get their T levels. Check to
Speaker 1: see if that's an issue for them, because my suspicion
Speaker 1: as it is that they need to investigate ways to
Speaker 1: just help themselves both spiritually materially to live into their
Speaker 1: nature as men. I suggest very simple remedies in the book,
Speaker 1: like doing pull up, some push ups, or having seminaries
Speaker 1: require competitive sports or something like this, just anything to
Speaker 1: get men active. We live in such a sedentary age
Speaker 1: and the Industrial Revolution has really there's many blessings that
Speaker 1: we have because of the Industrial Revolution, like being on
Speaker 1: this podcast, but it's also a lot of implications in
Speaker 1: our life where we're just very sedentary, often staring at
Speaker 1: a blue screen, and the best you can hope for
Speaker 1: is kind of the next either addictive game or show
Speaker 1: that can entertain you to sleep. And this is no
Speaker 1: way to live. This is I don't think anybody when
Speaker 1: they if they were to be authentic and sincere would admit,
Speaker 1: at least on the right, would admit like, yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: not proud of doom scrolling. I'm not. I don't like
Speaker 1: that behavior. But I also like it's a nice dopamine head.
Speaker 1: And this is also something I try to teach, like
Speaker 1: God designed dopamine, and he designed dopamine to be one
Speaker 1: attached to your wife if you're a man, and he
Speaker 1: attached it. He designed it to be attached to your
Speaker 1: productivity in life, so that your kind of chemical hardwiring
Speaker 1: is for like, as you achieve things, you kind of
Speaker 1: like you get into a flow state and you achieve
Speaker 1: more things. This is all natural, this is what God designed,
Speaker 1: but a lot of Christians just don't talk about it
Speaker 1: because they want to obsess over ideas, and they want
Speaker 1: to obsess over kind of like simp the material the
Speaker 1: spiritual concerns, which, of course, again, your soul is more important.
Speaker 1: I think I say this in the book the soul
Speaker 1: has a greater pre eminence. Why because our eternal destination.
Speaker 1: While it is embody and in soul, there will be
Speaker 1: a time where the body is separated from the soul,
Speaker 1: and so that soul persists throughout any kind of an
Speaker 1: intermediate state when it's detached from the body, when the
Speaker 1: body goes into the ground, and then it is reunited
Speaker 1: either to eternal bliss in heaven or eternal damnation and hell.
Speaker 1: And so our bodies do matter greatly. I'm not trying
Speaker 1: to diminish the importance of prayer or activities that like
Speaker 1: worship or anything like that, but we just totally ignore
Speaker 1: many times the material aspects of men. And that's one
Speaker 1: of the most I think it's one of the chief
Speaker 1: battlegrounds that we're facing today, especially in the church, is
Speaker 1: we just don't even talk about these things. We don't
Speaker 1: talk about how you dress, how you look, and we're
Speaker 1: not getting into looks maxim or anything like that. But
Speaker 1: we do want men to be shaped like men in
Speaker 1: their very body, to dress well as fitting as is
Speaker 1: fitting for men. All these things are actually really important
Speaker 1: and not dishonoring to God. It's not it's not vanity
Speaker 1: to be concerned with one the way you look, how
Speaker 1: fit you are, because that's going to shape your apprehension
Speaker 1: of the divine.
Speaker 2: That point, Chase, I think that this is a trap
Speaker 2: that a lot of to be honest, smart kids fall into.
Speaker 2: Right if you are academically inclined, if you are particularly
Speaker 2: with sort of a humanities bent, there is this idea that, oh,
Speaker 2: I'm better than that you know. I am simply a mind.
Speaker 2: I do not need to embody my physical form. I'm
Speaker 2: better than you know, those idiots. And I say this
Speaker 2: as someone who came into physicality relatively late in life.
Speaker 2: I was a fat kid. That change from one just
Speaker 2: even losing weight, but two, being physically active is impossible
Speaker 2: to overstate, even down to the confidence you display in
Speaker 2: social settings like then, we have this sort of background
Speaker 2: calculation running in any interaction, which is could I win
Speaker 2: this fight? And it's like very deep, it's like lizard
Speaker 2: brain stuff. You know, I'm not saying you should actually
Speaker 2: swing on your boss, you know, when you ask to
Speaker 2: do something at the office. I'm not saying you shouldn't
Speaker 2: do it. But in all seriousness, right, that part of
Speaker 2: you that is sort of weighing, that physicality, it's always there,
Speaker 2: can't really get rid of it, that sort of hierarchy
Speaker 2: seeking part of the male brain, that social dynamic. You
Speaker 2: were handicapping yourself. You were putting yourself in this sort
Speaker 2: of resentful state of mind. And that may sound like
Speaker 2: woo woo nonsense, it's genuinely not. I mean, look at
Speaker 2: like all the ground Jordan Peterson was able to cover
Speaker 2: with basically like clean your room, you know, wash yourself
Speaker 2: and stand up straight. And it's like, okay, well, I
Speaker 2: mean that's certainly start. It's better than nothing. But that
Speaker 2: same trend he's identifying, it's like that applies much more
Speaker 2: so to being a male shaped mail, which is a
Speaker 2: pretty low bar to clear.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: I'm not saying you have to like blast a gram
Speaker 2: of trend or whatever, but just like, please don't do that.
Speaker 2: That would be funny, especially in this podcast Tad made
Speaker 2: I guess, but it all seriousness right, simply looking like
Speaker 2: you are, you know, roughly correctly shaped. You know, it's
Speaker 2: not like seeing your toes. And I say that laughingly,
Speaker 2: but like as someone who has been through that process,
Speaker 2: like that is just about the most unalloyed positive I
Speaker 2: can think of in my life. Like there's really no
Speaker 2: morning I wake up and I'm like, wish I was
Speaker 2: still fat anyway, sorted out to get too much into
Speaker 2: the self help stuff. Just wanted to sort of add
Speaker 2: an addition, Oh.
Speaker 1: That's that's a great topic. Because if a young man
Speaker 1: is dealing with you know, he's overweight, he feels lethargic,
Speaker 1: biologically seating donuts and pizza and soft drinks and all
Speaker 1: this kind of stuff, and he comes to a Christian
Speaker 1: leader in his church or denomination or school whatever, maybe
Speaker 1: I just feel depressed. I just feel sad. What he
Speaker 1: rarely encounters is you should lose weight. Typically en is
Speaker 1: you should pray more, you know, And these aren't opposed again,
Speaker 1: these are not opposed to one another. You should pray more,
Speaker 1: I should pray more. Everyone should pray more to the Lord,
Speaker 1: but they're not being given. And this way you go
Speaker 1: back to what you brought up earlier, the rigor kind
Speaker 1: of the basic instruction on what it looks like to
Speaker 1: follow God in this life as a man. Instead, they're
Speaker 1: given kind of platitudes and even oftentimes discouraged from focusing
Speaker 1: on the body because they've been taught that the body
Speaker 1: doesn't matter, that it's going to burn up in the end,
Speaker 1: that it's simply an empty shell. And because of gnosticism,
Speaker 1: we want to be free of this body, and we
Speaker 1: want to you know, the material is bad inherently. We
Speaker 1: read words in English like flesh and world and don't
Speaker 1: know the grief behind them and simply read those as
Speaker 1: material existence itself is corrupt and bad and not just
Speaker 1: unredeemable but a problem. And we just don't have a
Speaker 1: comprehensive view of these things, such that we don't encourage
Speaker 1: young men, especially in even chocal spaces, with basic things
Speaker 1: like hygiene, fitness, dressing well, all in the name of
Speaker 1: not offending them or being inclusive and being a nice
Speaker 1: person to them. And it seems more nice to avoid
Speaker 1: telling people, hey, like, if you're feeling this way, maybe
Speaker 1: you should lose weight. That's going to be perceived as
Speaker 1: offensive sometimes and I'm like, yeah, it will be and
Speaker 1: you don't have to be like cruel. I mean, guys
Speaker 1: like to be cruel about it. We like to joke
Speaker 1: in kind of cruel ways to each other. But like,
Speaker 1: these are just basic things that a lot of Christians ignore,
Speaker 1: which is part of the reason I wrote the book.
Speaker 2: Well, and I think everyone is probably seen to snippet
Speaker 2: from a British tabloid from ten years ago where it says,
Speaker 2: you know, man loses I don't know how to convert
Speaker 2: stone to pounds, but it's something absurd like two hundred
Speaker 2: and fifty pounds because one of his friends texted him,
Speaker 2: you're a fat expletive every morning for a year, and
Speaker 2: like that's a joke, right, Like, okay, that happened. That
Speaker 2: worked for him, but that's not exactly what happened to me,
Speaker 2: but it's pretty close. And okay, you know, as in
Speaker 2: the moment that that sort of rankled Pride one hundred percent,
Speaker 2: but also like that's sort of how we self police,
Speaker 2: and sometimes that self policing is necessary. Anyway, Chase, this
Speaker 2: has been a ton of fun. Man. I enjoyed your
Speaker 2: book quite a bit. Obviously, there's a link down in
Speaker 2: the description if you're interested in addition to the content,
Speaker 2: it's really nicely bound, which is not often the case
Speaker 2: with kind of dissident literature. So I appreciate that, you know,
Speaker 2: as someone who has quite a lot of it on
Speaker 2: their shelf. But other than I guess your your book,
Speaker 2: Offensive Christianity, your Twitter, and your substack. Is there anywhere
Speaker 2: else people can find you?
Speaker 1: Yeah, if you go to Full Proof Theology. That's my podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm also on YouTube. I interview thinkers like Curtis Jarvin
Speaker 1: oz Ginnis and others on my podcast, any kind of
Speaker 1: right wing thinker. It's very audience driven, so people will
Speaker 1: in my church out so my church will text me, hey,
Speaker 1: I read this article, you should talk to this guy,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, great, well, so feel free to send
Speaker 1: me suggestions. But yeah, Offensive Christianity Book dot com is
Speaker 1: the place to go find the book. You can follow
Speaker 1: me on Twitter at Jjsdavis substack jjsdavis dot com. Lots
Speaker 1: going on. I've also got kind of I know we're
Speaker 1: wrapping up here, but just as a brief aside, I
Speaker 1: started a cool project on the side because a lot
Speaker 1: of the stuff I'm attacking in the book is modern
Speaker 1: kind of rationalism and a lot of the literature that
Speaker 1: Christians read today is based in that scheme, that frame
Speaker 1: of mind. I started a website called Commonplace dot Study
Speaker 1: where you can read premodern sources and you can actually
Speaker 1: use kind of an AI search engine on that thing
Speaker 1: to go find sources that are better than what you're
Speaker 1: going to get at your local Christian bookstore. And if
Speaker 1: you're a pastor or scholar Christian thinker is serious about
Speaker 1: especially Protestantism, I have tons of one of resources, many
Speaker 1: of which have never been published or translated at Commonplace
Speaker 1: dot Study, So I'd highly recommend for an intellectual audio
Speaker 1: such as yours. Go check out that website.
Speaker 2: Well again, man, thanks, this was a ton of fun.
Speaker 2: Get everyone at home, keep your head up. I can't
Speaker 2: last
Speaker 1: M