REWIND: Masculinity Matters

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign. [00:00:16] Speaker B: Hey guys, Jack Wilke here, bringing back another rewind episode as we continue our hiatus. This one is called Masculinity Matters. It was really the first one. I remember getting real good audience feedback, a lot of chatter or discussion and comments and questions. And this obviously has been a thing we've gone back to a few times over the years talking about masculinity and femininity as they have been so neglected. There's so much confusion even when they are talked about. It is talked about from many times the wrong angle as we discuss in this episode. So that's one we're running back for you this week. I did want to tell you, if you're coming to Lads to Leaders Nashville, come and find us. Joe and I especially will be there at the booth all weekend. I don't believe will will be able to make it up, but come by and say hello. We're going to be there with FocusPress products and be sure to come by, let us know. You're a deep thinker. So we're looking forward to that. And without further ado, here is this week's rewind episode, Masculinity Matters. [00:01:14] Speaker C: So this week we want to get into a topic that plenty of people have been asking for on the podcast. And that's just a shout out to everybody who has been commenting and sending emails. We appreciate it. And one of the things that has been asked for is for us to cover the topic of masculinity. We are going to take the next four weeks and discuss masculinity, femininity, marriage, and then also the, I guess, the issues, the problems with masculinity, femininity, gender in general, which is the idea of transgenderism, homosexuality, things like that. That will be our fourth episode that we'll wrap up this month of April with. But we want to get into this idea of masculinity. And it's been in culture. It's been in the headlines recently for sure, specifically with two recent headlines. And the first is with this swimmer, Leah Thomas, who is formerly William and a transgender swimmer from Pennsylvania University, who recently won an NCAA title in a freestyle event. And so of course, this throws into throws comes to mind a lot of questions surrounding gender and surrounding these issues, such as does gender matter? Are there differences in gender? What is a man? What is a woman? The second cultural event that's taken place is the Supreme Court justice nominee that Biden has, has nominated. And of course, if you keep up with culture, then you see the question that was asked her. Can she define what A woman is. To which she said she'd have to leave that up to a biologist. Fellas, I'm going to open it up to you. Got Jack and Will here. What are your thoughts on this? [00:02:55] Speaker A: Well, with the two events that you brought up, as all three of us are guys that stay quite a bit plugged into, obviously sports, but also just culture in general, it's very unsettling when you see, you know, the. For instance, to go with the first one, Lia Thomas, a transgender man turned woman who is absolutely dominating the competition in women's swimming, just, you know, winning all these awards. And there's a lot of people that are, you know, in support of her. There's also. Or him. There's also a lot of people that are understandably outraged by it. And it does bring up these questions that we're trying to answer today. And that is, does it even matter in the first place? You know, should we be outraged that somebody has changed their gender, at least in their mind, and now has completely pretty much eliminated the competition they're going against in the sports world when it comes to women's swimming? And then the other thing that, that you brought up about Supreme Court justice, when asked, can you define them, you know, what is a woman, you know, chooses to decline and says, like you already brought up Joe, well, I don't know. I'm not a biologist. It's just very unsettling to see that this is the world that we're living in now. This is the society that our kids are going to have to grow up in. When, you know, simple definitions, or what used to be simple definitions of what a man is versus what a woman is to a lot of people is no longer simple. So to answer the question quickly before I turn it over to Jack, gender absolutely does matter. And that's what we're going to get into with this episode. Looking at God's word, looking at, you know, all the way back in Genesis, chapter two, when the genders were created, God made them different for a reason. You know, he didn't make them the same. He didn't give them the same roles, the same characteristics. And so again, that's what we're going to get into. The short answer, obviously, the one that we're going to be elaborating on here is gender absolutely does matter. Jack, what would you have to add to that? [00:04:44] Speaker B: So my corner of Church of Christ, Facebook, I guess, has been very up in arms about both of these stories, right. Sharing the pictures. And it really is absurd when you see a Man swimming against women and standing next to them, towering over them, just, it's a whole different, you know, it's just a man and a woman. It's very different. And then of course, Ketanji Brown Jackson, the nominee for the Supreme Court, answering that question, there's a lot of people mad about that. And I think that's a positive thing because it is ridiculous. On the other hand, there's that question of, okay, well, what is a woman? But if you put that to the average Christian, if you put that to the average church, what are they going to declare from the pulpit? We can say, you know, beyond body parts and chromosomes, we can't answer much. When you start going, why? Why are there differences? Will mentioned they were created differently. Adam and Eve, male and female. Adam created first, Eve created second, Eve taken from his rib, his side. The roles that they're given, the curses that they're given, they're all different. Why? What is the difference? And if we don't have an answer for that, if we don't have any prescriptive teaching, we're not a whole lot better off. And what ends up happening is you leave it open ended and people go, well, there's not much of a difference, so we can just choose what we want. And I think a lot of church teaching does that with these things that are cultural issues that might be hot button, might be a little controversial. They come up, there's a question about it and we always say gospel first and, and the essentials and the things that we have to have. Right. And then there's all these other things about how your home should be run, what a man is, what a woman is, how you should raise your children and all that. And the church's response is typically, you know, beyond maybe a question, we shy away from it. Yeah, or we shy away from it. You know, we can say men and there are men and women, but that's all we're going to say about it. Well, that's what we want to do here. And I think that's why there's such interest in it. Like you mentioned, Joe, people asking for this. [00:06:35] Speaker A: That's exactly right. And again, that's one of the reasons why we wanted to discuss in this episode is because not only has society and culture absolutely taken this and twisted it and perverted it to some extent, and you know, in many congregations, you know, the church across the United States, we are kind of afraid to talk about the differences between men and women. It's not that we agree with culture that there are no differences. But kind of like you brought up, Jack, either we don't really know how to articulate the differences, or we're too afraid to offend anybody based on the fact that God very much did give us different roles in marriage according to whether we are a man or woman. You know, hear the jokes of from the pulpit about, you know, whenever you talk about women's roles in the home, you know, the fact that, you know, some women might not like this and this might be controversial. Well, it shouldn't be controversial. It shouldn't be tough for us to say. We shouldn't be having to put, you know, we shouldn't be having to hesitate to say these things. And yet in many cases, we are. And so that's what. That's part of what we want to get into today with not just the physical differences, not just the, you know, obvious characteristic differences that we see for men and women. What about their roles? And so that's really where we want to head. What is a man? What is a woman? What does God's word have to say? Like Joe said, we're going to make this a series next week. We're going to get into what is a woman? You know, answering that question from what God's word has to say. But this week, we want to focus on the man side of things and. Go ahead, Joe. [00:07:59] Speaker C: Yeah, because this is the one that, you know, we hear a lot about women. We hear a lot about empowering women, women in the workplace, the gender pay gap and closing the gender pay gap and making sure there's equal opportunities for each woman. I mean, we hear a lot about. Which is really a feminist ideology. We hear a lot about that. We don't hear too much about what a man is supposed to be. One of the things we want to get into, just to give the outline for where we're going to go with this particular episode, we want to look at the cultural stereotypes of men. What is the culture telling us we should be? What is the culture glorifying for what a man should be? And even sometimes not glorifying it, but just kind of the expectations of culture. What are those cultural stereotypes? Then? We want to look at why stereotypes are bad, but then get into how the church has really failed us as men. And we want to wrap up with the man of God. What I would consider to be the archetypes going back to scripture and saying, what does a man look like? How does scripture define a man? And what should the average 21st century American male, Christian male look like? Because we Know what we shouldn't look like, but we find ourselves running away from something and not to something. And this is what the church's big issue is, I think, is as we get more into this idea of feminist ideology and combating the feminist ideology, the feminists know their position, they know what they're after. They know how to define their terms. The question is, do we know how to define our terms? And it speaks to your point, Jack, One of the biggest issues of the church is we can point fingers and say how ridiculous that she can't define a woman. I work with people all the time that can't tell me why marriage is important in the eyes of God and say, well, why does marriage matter? Well, I don't know. Well, why does sex matter? Why did God create sex? Well, I don't know. I guess, you know, to procreate, to have kids, even in these are people in the church. We don't have those answers oftentimes. So we're quick to point the finger. I think we need to understand how feminist ideology has creeped into our understanding of gender itself and recognize we have to have something that we're chasing, not just running away from that, but saying this instead of feminist ideology. Follow us. Go here. [00:10:10] Speaker B: Right. A prescriptive of this is what? Because as you're saying, if we don't have anything, you can't beat something with nothing. And so we have to have a direction. And one of the things, in 10 plus years of working with Focus Press, the thing that we get the most heat for from inside of the church has been, and it's been Dr. Brad Harrop that's done most of the work on this, put out articles on this, is when he says you should raise your daughters differently than you raise your sons, that your sons, you know, should have certain goals. In fact, he's put out a couple DVDs on these things. Teaching series about here's how sons should be raised, here's what they should be raised, what values, what characteristics, here's what girls should be going for. And the same end goal of when they become adults, their careers, their things that they're pushed towards should be different because they're designed for different things. [00:11:00] Speaker A: Absolute uproar every time. [00:11:01] Speaker B: Oh, man. Typically, yeah, like I said, the most controversial thing we say, and there's a lot of controversies in the church, there's a lot of controversies in Christianity, but the biggest sacred cow is the differences in gender. And that's something that we have to address and we have to get right because Again, we can't just shrug our shoulders and say, however you want to do it. However, whatever feels good to you, whatever you think works for you and your family. No, God has prescriptive teaching on this that we need to follow and we need to share with people, because we're Christians, what we believe is that God's way is the best way, and if God has a way, we should be following it. [00:11:39] Speaker A: Exactly right. That's exactly right. [00:11:42] Speaker C: So as we think about feminism, as we think about how it's shaped our understanding of man, as it shaped our understanding of gender itself, I want to start taking a look at these stereotypes, the things that the culture pushes on us and says, this is what a man is. This is. As we look at a man, this makes us, I would say, more easily targetable, maybe for scrutiny, for controversy, for issues to arise, because they can. A stereotype is really just an overblowing of something that may be based somewhat in reality. Right. But we push it to its furthest length, its furthest extent, and we say, this is what it is. And so as we're looking at these stereotypes, I want, for as the listener here, I want the listeners to be cognizant, be recognizing what, maybe what you believe on some of these things, how this, maybe some of this ideology has creeped into your mind. Because chances are, even, even for me, it's creeped into my thinking sometimes on gender itself. Sorry, go forward. [00:12:47] Speaker A: And why is that? It's because we're getting it from all directions around us. We're getting it from kids movies, from Pixar movies. We're getting it from social media. We're getting it from the sports world. Now the controversies come up with commentators. We're getting it from music, politics, every realm of, you know, every outlet we are getting that from is the reason why there's so much confusion. There's so much, you know, like we started the episode with, we don't really know how to articulate the differences because we're just absolutely drenched in this world and in the society that says there aren't really any differences. And so, you know, to start off with the first stereotype, we've got several here. And this is, I would say, unless you guys disagree, I would say this is the one that kind of the feminist ideology is based off of, is built around, and that is the idea that men, that males are just these chauvinistic jerks who are out to keep women suppressed, that they view it as their right to wield their power to take advantage of people to, you know, mow down anybody who's in their way to retain their power. And again, they're just chauvinistic jerks. And, you know, again, I would say this is the one that the feminist ideology is based off of. And obviously, anybody can look at that and say, that's not a good thing. We don't want art. We don't want men to be chauvinistic jerks who are just mowing people out of the way. And so the feminist ideology is saying, look, this is bad. We don't want this. So let's go the other direction. What would you guys. [00:14:08] Speaker C: There is. There is some truth to this in the Harvey Weinstein's, the Kevin Spacey's, when MeToo happened, it happened with a lot of guys that come to find out they were using their power to, you know, have. Have sexual relations and to push themselves on people. And we know this happens, just not even in the sexual realm. That's what the Me Too movement is based on. But this happens all the time. So once again, stereotypes are based in some form of truth at some level. Yes, there are some men that fit this. The problem with this, this stereotype is that it puts a lot of men. It puts. And for the feminists, I think it puts all men who are in a position of power as the chauvin, Calvinistic jerks who are looking to wield it inappropriately, looking to take advantage, as you mentioned. That is a scary thing because it keeps every man from wanting to rise to power. Right. It keeps us wanting to. [00:15:03] Speaker A: Just because we don't want to be labeled that way. [00:15:04] Speaker C: Correct. I don't want to be the chauvinistic jerk. I don't want to be the guy who's taking advantage of people. Therefore, my natural inclination as a man to have dominion, to be the best that I can be, to push into, you know, the upper echelons of my company, whatever it is now. It's a little scarier now in the back of our mind. Well, I don't want to be one of those guys. Right. And so I think it's a subtle way for control, but I also think it perfectly plays into their narrative when you do see guys do this, because they can start looking at every common man, and it keeps us in an apologetic, like, it's not me, it's not me. I'm sorry. I don't do those things. That's not healthy for men. [00:15:39] Speaker B: All right, so another education moment. I do this every now and then about fallacies. I think that's A really important thing for people to study is how arguments are made and how many fallacies are out there in these arguments today. Let's talk about the Mott and Bailey fallacy. It's this idea. You put forth a pretty extreme idea that people are going to disagree with and you're going to. It's going to be controversial. And then you back it up with an uncontroversial idea. And when people attack the controversial idea, you pull back to the uncontroversial one and say, well, what, you're okay with this? You know, you have a problem with this. So the Mott and Bailey fallacy here is all men are chauvinist. All, you know, masculinity is toxic. And you read these things, the quotes that are out there is basically all men are rapists. I mean, that is the extreme ones. But you've also got, and I'm not exaggerating, that is literally out there, but that masculinity is toxic. And we need to teach our boys not to be masculine. And we've got to get people out of this. And that's that controversial belief that they put out. And then, like you say, you've got these chauvinistic people, you've got the Harvey Weinstein, you've got these guys that treat people like jerks. You know, just go in and the kind of people that will berate the waitress, the kind of, you know, that kind of attitude. And it's really bad. And so when you say, well, hold on, masculinity is not toxic, they'll say, oh, so you're okay with Harvey Weinstein? It's this fallacy again, that happens so many times that people make these arguments to make them into the same thing. It's not the same thing. Masculinity is not responsibility or is not responsible for all of the bad things that masculine people do. [00:17:12] Speaker C: Correlation does not equal causation. Exactly. Second off, what happened with Ellen. Ellen's a woman. Ellen had came out, had a very toxic quote, unquote workplace. She got in big trouble for it because she was treating people terribly, using her power, using her privilege to talk down to people, to berate her. You know, her employees, her staff. She's a woman. So is that toxic? Masculinity is a toxic femininity. Where does that fall into it? It's not just because you're, you know, on. You're male and you do. It doesn't make it any better if you were or any worse than if you were female doing it to your Point, though, I had this quote pulled up so that. That's perfect. Your idea of toxic masculinity, for those who are listening or going, is it really that bad? Lisa Wade, Occidental University in 2017, said she's a professor, the problem is not toxic masculinity. It's that masculinity is toxic. We can only give masculinity so many modifiers for so long before we have to confront the possibility that it is masculinity itself that has become the problem. Call masculinity out as a hazardous ideology and denounce anyone who chooses to identify with it. Andrea Dworkin, back to 1976 said, Every woman's son is her potential betrayer and also the inevitable rapist. Inevitable rapist or exploiter of another woman. These people are out there, you look at and go, well, that's just crazy. Notice a lot of these crazy ideas are people that are in power from professors of universities that are training your women and children in this ideology to be afraid of the average man. To say, the average man, every man really is going to be a rapist at some point in time. Like you said, Jack, we extend it out to the furthest reach and we go, that's ridiculous. And then they point. Or, or they, they take something that, you know, I think you said it perfectly, is a logical fallacy in the way that they pin us against one another. [00:19:01] Speaker A: Well, talk about logical fallacies. You know, how many. The reason that, that the biblical position of masculinity is not being defended is because of how many times, you know, a red herring is brought up. You know, somebody says, you know, you, you, you take a stance for, take a defense for masculinity. What's people's next objection? Oh, so you hate women, so you're sexist, so you're misogynistic. Nobody is allowed to stand up and defend masculinity. Nobody is allowed to stand up and defend men because we just get shouted down. It's the cancel culture thing. You know, every voice is leaning one direction. And so the one person, you know or the couple of people that are going to try to fight back are just going to get shouted down. And so that's the problem with a lot of these stereotypes. [00:19:41] Speaker C: But really, this first one, the interesting thing about. Before we move on to the second one, the interesting thing about this is if you were to apply the same logic that we apply to men onto a woman, how would people like it? When we were talking about this before the show, my wife had Actually brought this up that, you know, women, when a woman is assertive in the workplace, when a woman is really trying to, you know, establish who she is and kind of be a dominant presence in the workplace, that's applauded, right? When a man does it, he's aggressive and he's dominating. He's domineering. He's a bad guy, he's mean. If a woman does it, you go, girl. You're supposed to stand up, right? This is the. He's a chauvinistic jerk. He's patriarchy, quote unquote. He's perpetuating the toxic masculinity. But a woman doing the exact same thing is perfectly fine, so she's okay. [00:20:32] Speaker B: Calling women strong is a very common compliment right now. That's like something you're supposed to say, oh, she's a very strong woman. How many guys are you allowed to say, he's a strong man? That's a bad thing. That literally is a negative connotation. And so that's this picture of chauvinism is, you know, that all men who assert themselves at all, who assert anything, are domineering and bad. And so that's stereotype number one. Number two, Joe, you go ahead with it, because I think this is one that's especially up your alley in therapy as well. [00:21:03] Speaker C: Yeah. And it perfectly dovetails, I think, with this last one, of taking advantage of people. That's the idea of every man is a sexual animal who merely serves his own instincts to get every woman in bed. You see this through, obviously, in the culture. I have not been on Pornhub or OnlyFans, but obviously it's made its way into the zeitgeist, so to speak. Just the cultural understanding. People start to understand or start to see OnlyFans. They start to see even YouTube ads with the guy with the cool sunglasses and the nice, perfectly trimmed beard. Right. I mean, not one hair out of place, and he's like, hey, let me show you how to get these. You know, how to get chicks. And you go, wow, every Axe Body spray commercial ever. Oh, my goodness. Exactly. There's so many of these things, and there's multiple courses online, and maybe I don't know what I'm clicking on on YouTube to get me these ads. [00:21:54] Speaker B: So that's the problem is you're searching for stuff about masculinity, and YouTube is going, oh, you want that? Well, here you go. Yeah, there you go. [00:22:02] Speaker C: Let me tell you how to get women in bed. That's masculinity to a lot of people is that puts me as the apex predator. Top of the food. [00:22:10] Speaker A: How many alpha male can you put in your belt? [00:22:12] Speaker C: Right, Correct, correct. And it's. Wow, you know, that's pretty impressive. [00:22:16] Speaker A: The scary thing. I'm sorry to interrupt. [00:22:18] Speaker C: No, no. [00:22:19] Speaker A: Scary thing is that's what so many Christian young men are being raised to think, that that's what defines being a man. That, you know, how many. You know, from a. A less extreme point of view, how many girls can you date? You know what, you know, how many girls have you kissed? That type of thing. And then, of course, that eventually can escalate into something far worse. But that's the problem, is we don't have people that are teaching these young men. No, this is what being a man is. We have the culture. We have YouTube. We have only fans. We have TikTok teaching young men. This is what being a man means. [00:22:50] Speaker C: Even the little jokes when the kid's 11. Oh, a little ladies man over here, right? Oh, wow. Bet you could get any. Any girl you want. Are those helpful? Are those advancing the cause that we want to advance when we're making jokes about whether a boy can pick up any chick? Even us, will you make a great point. Even us fall into that as Christians, even we fall into this understanding of, like, if a guy can get any chick that he wants, he must be a man. And that's not true at all. There's plenty of guys who I think can, you know, even these guys on the YouTube videos, I'm sure they can bed plenty of women. That doesn't make you a man. That doesn't make you responsible. That doesn't make you anything close to what an archetypal man from the scriptures is all about. We're just seeing a man who's great with the ladies. At what point did this come into. I don't know, come into the public consciousness that this is what made a man? I'm curious. I could be wrong on this. I'd have to do more research. If with the rise of Internet pornography, the rise of. [00:23:49] Speaker B: I mean, you go back before that, and I guess Playboy was, you know, 1950s, but James Bond movie started in the 60s, and James Bond always gets the girl, the cool guy. It always does. I mean, there's this history of. And I mean, you watch tv, Seinfeld, Jerry dates a new woman every single episode. And obviously there's plenty of, you know, implication of that they're not just dating because that's what the people in that world do. And any show, I mean, that was in the 90s. Any show on TV today. I mean, you've got promiscuity, you've got this implication that everybody around you is having sex all the time. And. And so as a man, you've either got to get with that, you know, and that's what you're supposed to pursue. That's. That's winning in life, really. [00:24:26] Speaker C: Hair bands of the 80s, you know, think about Motley Crue and all those and how what womenizers they were. And it's easy. The reason this is a stereotype is it's easy to. To throw men, all those men in the same. Like, I want to be married. I want to have a wife. Well, why aren't you? You're basically just as bad as Motley Crue. You're just as bad as, you know, the worst of the worst, right. Who's just going out to try to get anyone. It's like, no men are interested in women. A strong alpha male, I think, is a very good thing who does want to have a wife. But if we can get. If we can kind of conflate the two and get the same guy who wants to. Yeah, who wants to have a woman, who wants to sleep with a woman, that's actually a very good thing. We look at that, we go, that's terrible. This is why we have so many issues in marriage. But the interesting thing is a lot of the people in the world recognize that is not everything. Sex is not everything. And the highest calling of a male is not sex. And you see this. I think pornography has destroyed the culture in so many ways. But if you ever watch a no fat video, which is an online community that is against pornography, basically pornography use and such, and then these YouTube videos that you know, how to get out of porn, how to break free from porn, these five steps, whatever it may be, these things have millions of views. These things have dozens of comments underneath of guys saying, I have tried everything to get out of this. This is Christian and non Christian. Guys recognize pornography's cheap. Getting women is not the end all be all of a man. And we want to live healthy, happy lives. So the culture, I think, doesn't. There's a lot of men that don't want to accept this. They push this because it's easy to manipulate us. And it's easy to pretend that we're gratifying our needs through these things, which gets. Obviously, the people pushing this, they get rich. I mean, the porn industry is worth billions more than NBC, abc, cbs, all combined. They're making A ton of money off of men's pleasure and saying, this is what makes you a man. Not in the least of what makes you a man. Along that line, though, we want to hit the third stereotype. And this is the idea of. I don't know if we want to even have a specific term for this type of man, but it's the beer loving, big truck driving, fishing fanatic. He never showers, he never cleans the house, he always leaves the toilet seat up. He's got no idea how to communicate with his wife. He's, you know, Sunday is football day. Don't dare bother him in his man cave because while he's watching football, basically his ears shut off and all he wants to do is eat hot dogs and potato chips and watch 30 football games in a day. Like, that's the. I don't. [00:27:06] Speaker B: It's kind of a composite of the TV dad, the Homer Simpson, the whatever the guy's name is from Family Guy, the guy in the Married with Children. You know, I don't, I haven't watched these shows, so I don't know, but you kind of see them in memes and, and clips and stuff like that. The TV dad of the guy that just is a lazy, bumbling idiot. Yeah, he's a bumbling idiot. He's a worthless man. Again, like you said that he kind of. His view of masculinity is these outward external things of a truck that makes a lot of noise when he peels out of the neighborhood and he can drink a lot of beer. And that's it. It's all external. That's it. [00:27:41] Speaker C: Don't forget the lift kit on the truck. [00:27:43] Speaker A: Right, right. I would call at least that part of it the country music stereotype, which I know you two don't listen to country music in the least, but it's that idea that what makes, what makes being a man is drinking beers with the guys on Friday night, going hunting on the weekend, not really paying any attention to your wife. And until you absolutely have to, again, can't communicate. Fishing, hunting is what you live for, that type of thing. And you know, to some extent, obviously, you know, take it with a grain of salt, but to some extent this is getting a little bit closer to, you know, what we believe masculinity teaches because, you know, there's. There's your outdoors, you're. There's something that you're chasing as opposed to just, you know, chasing after women or whatever it is. But there's still so much left to be desired here, and it still Sets such a low standard for guys that, you know, if you pay attention to your wife every now and then, if you show up to church, you know, on Sunday mornings, then you're good to go. That's the low bar that we've set with a stereotype like this. And this is the one or one of the ones, I should say, one of the stereotypes that has leaked into the church quite a bit when it comes. When, you know, you hear preachers, you hear speakers and teachers when they're talking about men in a very stereotypical way, this is the one that they'll hit. [00:28:55] Speaker C: Brothers, you just need to help your wives out in the kitchen a little more. You know, your wife is just. She's longing for you to just come home and talk to her instead of turning on the TV at home. And, you know, if you could just clean up the clippings to your shaving after and, you know, these things can help your wife show that you care about her. Sure, sure, I guess so. But if you're going to cheapen it that much, again, you set the bar on the ground and say, man, if you can step over it, that'll be good enough. Like, there is some positivity to this. And that's why I think it connects with so many men. There's the I'm in charge, but are you really in charge? And it also, it's cheap, it's fake. It's the same thing as porn. That's a cheap version. We're selling men cheapness. We're selling men fake, and they're buying it in a lot of cases. And it's the same thing here. If you come home with a giant Ford F350, that's with the lift kit and that, as you said, Jack makes a ton of noise every time it starts up. And you're paying like $10 a gallon for diesel. And, you know, you. Okay, you can be proud in that, but you're being proud in something that's kind of fake. You're being proud in the cheap. [00:30:03] Speaker A: Especially if your dominion ends when you walk in the door at home. That's what a lot of the problem is with this is, you know, we'll be authoritative. We'll, you know, we'll be masculine. When it comes to being the outdoors, we walk in the door. And again, generalizing here, it's a lot of guys that their. Their masculinity, their dominion ends at the door. They let their wife take care of pretty much everything else. And they go sit in the recliner. That goes Back to what Jack was talking about earlier. That cannot be. [00:30:26] Speaker C: You have these like man cave signs where down here we drink beer, down here we, you know, don't talk to our wives. And down here we watch as much football as we can. You know, just the dumb signs like that. And I just. As you said, Will, it's a broad generalization. A lot of guys don't fit into this. But the guys that do, I would just say they're. They're kind of making their masculinity cheap based on things that don't really matter. It's okay to have a big truck, it's okay to go hunting, it's okay to watch. Yeah, to have a man cave, to watch some football. Those are okay things. The question is, do you have your identity in those things? I think that's really the main question for the masculinity is your masculine identity and the things that you have and the materialism that takes place. Jack, how about you lead us off on the next stereotype? Because this is something that you've been talking about. You actually read the book that kind of came up with this term. [00:31:16] Speaker B: The author comes up with this concept of the bugman and that we're all surrounded by bugman. And that's really what a lot of people end up becoming today. And it's just somebody that like, has no purpose in life. You know, the biggest stereotype is the living in your parents basement kind of thing. But it's not always that. I mean, there's plenty of married guys that have their own houses that do this. And it's that they live for video games. They, you know, just kind of get a job and just cruise with it because it's enough to get by if they have a job. You live for the next Netflix release. You live for, you know, the, your big just fast food and all the junk that the world throws at. You're just a consumer. You're constantly consuming, and when you're constantly consuming, you're not producing at all. And so it's. You're excited about all the things that don't matter. You're not building anything, you're not producing anything. You're not growing yourself. You don't have any dominion as a man. You just kind of sit there and Disney says, here's the next thing to get excited about. And oh boy, that, that's, you know, my world is built around this, this Disney product. And you know, again, just Taco Bell. [00:32:21] Speaker C: Comes out with a new product, right? [00:32:23] Speaker B: And I mean, just what are you living for. And it's people that are living for what the culture is telling them to live for. I guess is the best way to shorten this idea. [00:32:33] Speaker A: But it's guys that don't chase after anything. They're not seeking to achieve anything beyond leveling up on Call of Duty. There's no, again, just desire to, to go out and to make themselves better, to achieve something. And this is one of those that a lot of society would look upon as bad. You know, some of these that we've addressed so far, you know, might not have as negative of a connotation as this one does. This one just about everybody can look at and say that's really not a good thing. [00:33:01] Speaker B: I think they can see the extreme as a bad thing. The guy that is 35 years old, living in his parents basement playing 8 hours of call of Duty video games or, you know, Fortnite or whatever game it is, every single day we look at that and go, wow, that's really bad. But if a guy can, if you can throw him, you know, get him married, get him a decent job and then build his life around that, otherwise that, that's acceptable, that's something we're okay with. And that's something that a lot of people, I think is almost becoming the default mode is just living for things that don't matter at all. Not contributing anything, not producing anything, not not growing up outside of a couple of external things. [00:33:43] Speaker C: I think it's the same idea as the previous one with the cheapness and the fakeness. But you just hit on an interesting point, the not growing up. How much is an attempt to go back to the youth, to go back to the glory days, right? We talk about the glory days of college and such. You'll hear from a lot of people. I think there's this idea of like, we want to stay perpetually young. Not just looking, but really in thought. We want to stay boys to stay kids. You're still binging on porn, you know, in your 30s, like that's, it's cheap, it's fake. It's something that, you know, maybe a teenager, it's not in a good way, but something that, that's kind of what boys get into is stupid stuff that we need to get out of it and we don't. We maintain this like childishness and even the things that we like. Okay, if you're playing Call of Duty, if you're playing Halo, whatever, the newest game is Assassin's Creed. I don't know, I'm not a gamer. If you're playing all those things when you're 14, 15, 16, okay? Moderation, everything. Right? But that's kind of what a kid does if you're still doing that after you got married, after you got married and have kids. And it's not that you can't play it some. It's. It's again, the guys that play it for six hours, you know, on the weekend, they just have an eight hour like every other weekend. It's just eight hours of doing their thing. Look, you have a family, you have a wife, you have, you have responsibilities. This is that bugman. I like the term bugman. Just it hits so much on, as you guys said, not necessarily a positive stereotype for man, but a stereotype nonetheless that is accepted in its lesser extreme forms as you're talking about Jack, accepted on a, on a different level that I think is dangerous to a lot of men. [00:35:20] Speaker B: Okay. [00:35:20] Speaker C: We need to have something to live for. [00:35:21] Speaker B: When I read the term, when I was reading it and came across it, I thought, that's pretty interesting, you know, and, and you start thinking about, yeah, there might be people like that. And then I started talking to a guy that I know and he had a T shirt on with a picture of a character from a TV show. I said, okay, you know, I recognize that, commented on it, whatever. He's like, yeah, I love that show. I got into it last summer, which had been like six, eight months ago, whenever we were having this conversation. And I've watched through the whole series four times since then. And I know I watched through the office six times and I watched through the. And it's just like, again, that's what he's living for, that is, is the, the pinnacle of his life is I really got to enjoy this TV show. And it's. With the last thing we were talking about. Hunting is good, fishing is good. You know, these things are good. Having a truck is fine. There's, it's, it's not that it's wrong enjoying a show, being, getting entertainment in your life. It's fine to an extent. But man, do something, do something. And, and I think that is what the world wants men to be today is passive, receptive, you know, not productive, just kind of perpetual boys in that sense. [00:36:27] Speaker C: Let's skip on to the last one. This is the last stereotype here that, to me, fellas, I think we're ending on maybe the, the bell of the ball, as they say, the biggest one. This is one that's pushed most in the culture. Pushed, if I can get that out, pushed Most in the church, really. And that a lot of our listeners may say, well, what's wrong with that? What's the problem? And that is this idea of nice guys. Nice guys. A man is somebody who is the perpetual nice guy. He's a friend to everybody, doesn't necessarily take a stand on things. He's very loving. If he does have to say anything to anybody, not that that's bad. There's a lot of positives to that, right. He's just not threatening. He's a servant leader, which, you know, for him might be. He just leads from the back. He's not going to tell anybody what to do. He's just going to kind of collect everybody's thoughts and lead from the back. And Mint, does that not sound like a fantastic gentleman? [00:37:25] Speaker A: Right. And that's the problem is two things about this one, number one, when it comes to one of the most dangerous stereotypes that, that men today within the church can be pushed towards, this is the one that I would say is the most dangerous for several reasons. One, like you just kind of hit on Joe. It's appealing, right? Who's going to say that we shouldn't be nice guys, right? Who is going to look at that and say, well, that's a. That's not a good thing, you know, surely, shouldn't we all be nice guys? Shouldn't we all, you know, not really be threatening, not really try to offend anybody? Especially with the way culture has now told us, you know, you can't make anybody upset, you can't ever offend anybody. So it's appealing for people to say, we need to train our young men to just be nice guys. But the other reason that it's so dangerous is because it's inevitably training men to never really take a stand for anything, to never hurt anybody's feelings, to never say, you know what, I'm sorry if this offends somebody. We're not going to do it this way. You know, you see it especially within the church, elders, ministers, again, from a general standpoint point of view has been brought up. I forget one of you guys brought it up earlier off air. The idea of you lead by a pole, you lead by who's going to get the least or what is what decision can I make that will cause the least amount of blowback. There's no masculinity when it comes to, we're going to go this way because this is the right thing to do. It's. Well, we really don't want to offend anybody. We don't really want to, you know, take a stand because that might, you know, send some people away. It's a problem, but it's because it's so appealing to people. It's one that within the church, from what I can see, this is what we're pushing our guys to be the nice guy. [00:38:59] Speaker B: And it, it's what you're taught relationship wise as well, is essentially kind of say yes, ma'am to your wife. If mama ain't happy, ain't nobody happy. That phrase is telling you be a nice guy. You know, if you ever do anything to cross your wife, even if it's, you're. You're in the right, you're in the. And there's also the other things you'll see. [00:39:19] Speaker A: Even when she's wrong, she's right. [00:39:21] Speaker B: Even when she's wrong, she's right. Or you know what, just tell her you're sorry, Just apologize and get it over with. That is horrible advice. Yeah. Happy wife, happy life. All of this is a nice guy ism applied to relationships of just get her approval. If you've got her approval, you're doing good. And then get everybody's approval if you're a nice guy. Preacher boy, don't really say anything that's gonna get people mad or they might leave the church over because, you know, we gotta be nice guys. We gotta, you know, don't, don't take hard stands. Don't. Don't be that guy. Don't be the person who won't be pushed around, who just kind of stands his ground. Don't be that guy. We need nice guys. And man, again, as you've both said, there's an appeal to it. It sounds good on the surface and then you see it in practice. And again, as I said, it's what I was taught. It's what most Christian men are taught. And you start doing it in your life and it doesn't make your wife happier, it doesn't make you happy, it hurts your relationship because you're not actually being a man. [00:40:15] Speaker A: So let me ask you to specifically, why is this such a something that we should be training our young men to avoid this nice guy stereotype? What are the problems with it? What would you guys say? [00:40:27] Speaker C: That's a good question. I so actually I have a series of screenshots that of a. I'm not on Instagram. My wife is on Instagram and she's amazing with this stuff. She follows a few different people. One is called the masculine mandate. The masculine mandate shares a lot of good thoughts and she had sent me this that I thought was pretty interesting. So this, I think will will answer your your question here. He posts this long one. I think there's a. There's nine slides. I won't read all of them, but he says nice guys give others what they want. Masculine guys give others what they need. Nice guys are actually selfish. Yes. They spend a lot of their energy trying to make everyone around them happy and comfortable. They don't offend, don't question, and always strive to make others happy. Sounds good, right? Wrong. The problem with the nice guy is his motive. His motive is his own comfort. His niceness is a way to manipulate people around him to give him what he wants and keep him comfortable. He doesn't care as much about making others happy so much as he cares about him making others happy. How making others happy benefits him. The nice guy husband buys his wife flowers to move past a conflict rather than talking through it. The nice guy co worker always compliments and flatters because the people are nicer to him and it might get him a raise. The nice guy boyfriend buys gifts for his girlfriend all the time because he is afraid of her and doesn't want to deal with her sour attitude or condescension. The nice guy dad gives his kids pretty much everything they ask for because he doesn't want to deal with their whining and he is too lazy to teach them contentment. The nice guy pastor avoids preaching directly on difficult topics because he cares more about how people think of him rather than boldly declaring the truth. But the masculine guy, the truly good guy, is different. His actions toward others are motivated by love, which seeks the greatest good rather than momentary happiness. He sacrifices of himself to do what is best for those around him, especially those under his care. It looks suspiciously a lot like the masculine leadership of Jesus. The masculine guy can and certainly does buy flowers for his wife, gets gifts for his girlfriend, offers sincere compliments to others, and gives special treats to his kids. The question isn't so much the what, but the why. And the why is often answered with the timing and motivation for his actions. So to answer your question, well, I think that partially begins to answer it. Teaching our voice to be nice to what end? For what purpose? Why is it important to be nice? If the idea is if you can get the more people who like you, the better person you are, that's just flat out wrong. Jesus had many people hate him and he tells Christians that basically you'll be hated, right? He flat out says you'll be hated so if the goal of your Christian son is to be liked by a bunch of people, that's wrong. His goal is to be in union with God and to help others see the overwhelming value, the overwhelming amazingness of being in union with God as well. And guess what? When he's doing that, he's going to tick a few people off. [00:43:21] Speaker A: Well, and Jack, I'll let you get into this because some recent Facebook posts on your timeline have revealed this. But the fact is that we have fooled ourselves into thinking that niceness is the number one virtue of being a Christian. That, you know, we have to be nice above all else. And we tend to kind of forget the other stuff that we're supposed to be. But, Jack, how would you answer that question? [00:43:42] Speaker B: Yeah, I think what Joe said is really good. I think a big problem with this is these are feminine qualities. You know, you look at the Adam, Eve dynamic, you look at the Ephesians five dynamic, the First Peter three, the relationship dynamic is that men are to take the lead. And the idea of being a nice guy is distinctly not taking the lead. It's always looking to everybody else for approval. It's always looking to everybody else of what do you want to do? Which way should we go? Basically, just your whole life is about catering to everybody else, keeping everybody else happy, rather than charting a course and actually leading somewhere. Because when you actually lead somewhere, you know what happens. Some people don't like it and they go somewhere else. You know, we've brought up Jesus. He said, woe to you. When all men speak well of you, you messed up. If you've got everybody thinking you're great, that doesn't mean that you can be rude. That doesn't mean, you know, don't be nice when there's opportunities to be nice or when you should be nice. But when it's a universal principle, then you can never be the guy that says, that's wrong. You can never be Jesus proclaiming woes on the Pharisees or calling Herod a fox or cleansing the temple, turning over tables and driving people out. If niceness was the pinnacle virtue, none of those things would have happened. And so you bring up the Facebook posts. The real argument was about tone, I guess. And, you know, should we say certain things and it just comes off as insulting? It comes off as off putting. It's like the truth is off putting sometimes. And the nice guy says, we shouldn't say that truth because people are going to get mad when we do. Well, then what happens? You've kept the truth from People. You've hurt people and nice guys hurt people by doing that. [00:45:24] Speaker A: That's the whole nice guys, you know, give others what they want rather than what they need. That Joe brought up just a second ago. [00:45:30] Speaker C: It's interesting. Well, we're going to wrap this up and move to some of the dangers of stereotyping. But another quote from the masculine mandate. Why are women drawn to the bad boy on the motorcycle? Because he is going somewhere and doesn't really care what anyone thinks about it. Women are attracted to men who are confident about who they are and where they are going. I would challenge nice men with that. Do you know who you are on your deepest level? And do you know where you're going in life? Do you have a set desire? And the desire can't be for your wife. That's actually her in the curse. That's her consequences. Her desire will be for you. Man is given. And we're going to get into this in a bit, but man is given purpose. Man is given commandment or law to follow before he's ever given a woman. You can't allow your wife to be your purpose, your mission. That's not what a man is for. A woman's purpose is to be a help meet while the man is chasing his mission. And I find too often with nice guys that their mission is to get everybody to like them and to serve the wife. And that's actually. That's backwards. But as we think about these dangers of stereotyping, we're just going to briefly touch on these. I think one of the things it does is it pigeonholes men into really just every situation is bad. You're either a jerk, weak, you're animals, clueless, or you're bums. And. And guys don't want to accept any of those. But there's really nowhere else to turn. Again, the feminists at least have a concrete ideology. They know who they are and we oftentimes don't. So I think cultures failed men by giving them the cheap. The Mountain Dew, the Taco Bell, the Netflix, binge porn, video games, all online jobs that never require man to even pick up a shovel to know what a tool is. I think that creates overall weak men. I have one of those jobs, so I'm not necessarily calling everybody out. I mean, that's what I do for a living. But at the same time, like, are we willing to get our hands dirty? And I think because the culture loves to stereotype men, loves to push men into one of these types of stereotypes, that we have a lot of men who go, well, which one do I fit in? I don't really fit into any of them. But I'll choose the ones that seem most appealing to me, which is why the nice guy. The nice guy and the big trucks, right, those are really the two. The alpha male and the, what you might call the beta male and then the gamma male. I would say, if you're anybody's familiar with these terms, the gamma really is kind of that bug man. But you get into the idea of hierarchy amongst the men and they fall right in line with these stereotypes and it's really hurting men. The other issue with stereotyping men is, well, I think you get into the idea of domestic violence against men being laughed at, right, because the man is weak if he's, if he's getting beat up by a girl, but if he defends himself and beats up the girl, then he's abusing his power. So he's either the chauvinistic jerk or he's the weak man. When we throw men into these difficult positions, these no win positions and give them no win stereotypes to follow, what do we expect to happen? [00:48:33] Speaker A: It keeps us from striving for greatness. It keeps us from, you know, seeking to achieve. It keeps us from seeking to have dominion over anything. Because once again, we don't want to be labeled as the chauvinistic jerk. We don't want to be labeled as the guy that is just trying to push people out of his way. And so then again, that pushes us the opposite direction to the point where we're not going to strive to have dominion over anything. We're not going to strive to achieve anything. And that is not a good thing for a, for Christian men to, to have that as their ideology. We have to have something more concrete than that. We have to have something that is more worthy to achieve than, than what the world, through these stereotypes is presenting. [00:49:12] Speaker C: Us a bar that is set higher that it requires men to be men in order to hit it not well. [00:49:18] Speaker B: It shows people what a man is. You know, when you say require men to be men, we don't have anything because it's always one of these things. And because again, some of those are so negative, so poor, we just end up with nice guy as a default. And again, nice guys don't do anything for anybody because they're nothing. They are a reactive position rather than a proactive position. And so to be a man is a proactive position. And so as we kind of move towards this, the church has failed men by driving Them to try to be nice men, nice guys of just kind of be a doormat. Don't step up. Don't. Don't take a stand. But as we look at all of these negative stereotypes we've. We've looked at. I think one of the best things we can do for defining a man is look at how a real masculinity overcomes all of these stereotypes. So the chauvinist. I saw a video the other day of a guy on a plane, and the stewardess, the flight attendant had told him, you got to get off your phone, as they do. And it escalated the point where try to make this your life goal that nobody. You never get to the point where people are videoing you screaming at people, because that's. You know, this guy is just screaming curse words, calling this the flight attendant. All kinds of awful names, profanities. It was disgusting. And that's the chauvinist thing. You can't tell me what to do. You blankety. Blankety blank. I mean, that's. It was awful, horrible. That's chauvinism, masculinity, Biblical, solid, grounded, good masculinity. Should be other men on that flight stepping between him and that flight attendant, saying, stop, this is not happening. Who's gonna do that? Women aren't gonna do that. Women shouldn't have to do that. We know that deep in our bones that that's not the case. What you need is good men to do that. When you talk about the sexual predator or the sexual animal stereotype going out and trying to get every woman the. The antidote to that is a good, honorable, virtuous man who is gonna say, you know what? I am not gonna go too far with my girlfriend. I am gonna draw the line. I'm not gonna do this. Or a father who says, you're not allowed anywhere near my daughter, buddy. You know, and not the stupid. I'm gonna clean my shotguns and intimidate him and then let them leave for six hours out of my view. I mean, how stupid are we? And so there's. There's that one, you know, like, the solid masculinity solves that problem. And you can go down the list of all of the negative stereotypes that people say. That's what being a man is. And it's bad. No, no, that's the bad version of it. And it is conquered by being the good version of a man. [00:51:41] Speaker C: I love that. [00:51:41] Speaker A: Such great points. Such great points. And you think about from the. From the church's point of view again, why Aren't we teaching this stuff? It's because, you know, generalizing once again here. But so often we spend so much time with our sermons, with our, you know, jokes, classes, whatever. Glorifying, putting women up on a pedestal. And what are we doing to the guys? Tearing them down. You know, they're kind of the butt of the jokes. We don't. We don't, you know, talk about what is great about being a man. And so the guy who goes to church leaves thinking, what is there that's great about being a man? You know, the women were glorified. Sure. And obviously, there's things about women we absolutely need to glorify and to say that that's a good thing. The men don't get it. And so we're left with these things that the world pushes because we're not taught the things that Jack just went over about. No, this is the. This is the thing to strive for, for being a man. This is the masculinity that we need to be striving to attain. [00:52:40] Speaker C: Notice. This is a. This will be a litmus test for those who are listening for their church. What does the Mother's Day sermon look like? And what does the Father's Day sermon look like at your church? [00:52:51] Speaker B: It's. It's a trope because it happens so often. [00:52:54] Speaker C: Exactly. I. I don't know that I'm into a church who actually, I would say, hits equally as hard or celebrates as. [00:53:01] Speaker B: It's usually. [00:53:02] Speaker A: It's usually the Mother's Day serm. How great moms and women are. And the Father's Day sermon is about how much dads and fathers are failing at their jobs. [00:53:10] Speaker C: Yeah, you. You gotta get. Get your stuff together because, you know, the dads are really important. And so all you dads who stink out there, you know, make sure you're doing better. Oh, moms, we love you so much. We're. We're. Honestly, it's. It's from weak men who refuse to stand up to women because it's like, well, so. And so may not like me. They may leave. Okay, go ahead and leave. This is what the scriptures say. And you go, wow, how unfeeling. You want people to leave your church? I don't know. Well, Jesus had 5,000 people following him and then said, hey, you got to eat of my flesh and drink of my blood. People go, what? I'm not following you there. And he says, yeah, because if you want to follow me, follow me. If you want to learn what that means, come here. So is it being A jerk. Purposefully. No, it's being a man saying, this is what the scripture teaches about men. This is what the scripture teaches about women. And anytime, and I've fallen into this as well as a preacher, anytime we start to preach on women, how many? I call it casualties. Caveat Christianity, right? We make so many caveats. I'm not saying this and I'm not saying that. [00:54:07] Speaker B: Or we can't make a critique of women without coming back around to. But the men also. [00:54:13] Speaker C: Correct. Correct it is. And Jack, you made this point before. We love to preach on Ephesians 5. We don't love to preach as much on First Peter 3, which is way harder on the women. Ephesians 5 is way harder on the men. First Peter 3 is way harder on the women. You don't hear as many sermons from that. So again, if you're listening and you say, well, you know, think about your church, think about how it handles both men and women issues. Do the women get called out for gossiping? That is First Timothy makes it very clear that is a woman led issue. All of the, you know, the slandering, the things like that that are typically women issues, do you hear those talked on near as much as you hear men stuff talked on? Yes, this is a painting with a broad brush. But look, I've been to a lot of churches. This is almost to a T. Exactly what happens because we're afraid to confront women. So go to the curse. [00:55:04] Speaker B: Go to the curse. Eve's curse was your desire will be for your husband. And it's a usurping thing. Right? She's going to take his authority. And we see with Adam the man's temptation is to step back and let her take that authority. But what do we teach on? We teach on men being, you know, domineering. And that can happen. We've talked about the chauvinistic man, but the man's temptation more often than not is going to be to sit back and let his wife do the work, let his wife raise the kids, let his wife lead the family spiritually and to do all these things. And her temptation, we talk about that, but we don't talk about her temptation is to reach in and grab that power. And so again, we don't talk about the weaknesses of women, we don't talk about the strengths of men and we don't build a positive view of being a man means this, it means garbage against this temptation that's natural to you. It means standing up in these ways and even standing up to your own wife. When the time comes, and when you do that, you're blessed for it, number one. But also you deserve honor for it. They receive this honor on Mother's Day because mothers deserve honor. It's a beautiful, honorable position. Fatherhood, masculinity, being a man has to be honored as well. If it's all duty and no honor, why would anybody sign up for that? [00:56:16] Speaker C: No respect. Yeah, that's what is supposed to be offered in Ephesians 5 is respect. And I think again, in our attempts to be nice and be liked, we have mixed up being liked and being respected in our churches. And so it's important to have strong biblical leaders who are willing to stand up for what's right. And that's easy. That's kind of what we're, you know, everybody says, well, we stand up for what's right. But it's a lot harder when push comes to shove. And standing up for what's right may lose you a few members here or there's who are ticked about something that you said, something that you did. I think a man is somebody who is willing to go to them, speak with them, study with them, try to make it right with them, but also not back down off the position, not be the nice man. And church has really pushed that. But as we think about this, we want to swing into what I would really call the archetype. We've dealt with the stereotypes, the built out, kind of like the ridiculous, overblown, this is what a man should be. No, what's the archetype? And the archetype is the idea of going back to really the beginning. What is a man? What is the example of a man? What is the, like the perfect. And it's going to be Christ, of course. Right. But we want to look at a few going back into Old Testament and decide or find out what is God's plan for man? What is God's plan for masculinity. We've seen the way the culture's taken, we've seen the way the church has really bought into this negative view of man and not being able to, to just celebrate manhood, celebrate masculinity for what it is, to respect it. Will, I'm going to turn this one over to you and have you lead the way into what is God's design for masculinity. [00:57:53] Speaker A: So you turned over to me, Joe, you've done a lot of work recently in Genesis 2 and 3. I think you've been preaching on that now for what, two or three years? It seems like with the sermon sum. [00:58:03] Speaker C: Up somewhere around there. [00:58:04] Speaker A: Yep. But no, you go back to the first few chapters of Genesis and you see just how really how many things God intended for man before woman was really even on the scene. A lot of people mistakenly think that work was a curse, was part of the curse. When Adam and Eve sinned, no work was in place before sin even took place. The part of the curse was that their work would now be harder. Right. But Genesis chapter 2, verse 15, God had already commanded man to work. He'd given him purpose, right. He'd given him something to work for, something to strive for, something to achieve. And again, as somebody who is a very naturally competitive person, somebody who's, who's fairly goal oriented, myself, to me, that's one of the things that I think you asked the question, what's great about being a man? What is God's design for masculinity? I think that is a big part of it is that you have goals in mind. You have things that you're absolutely striving to achieve. You have things that you are working towards, again with a lot of these other stereotypes that gets erased if you adopt the bugman mentality or the, you know, I'm just going to go out hunting on the weekend mentality. You know what, all the stuff that we've already discussed, God designed us for so much more than that. God gave man purpose. God gave man something to work for and achieve before he even created woman. Again, Genesis 2:15. And so again, as somebody who's competitive and somebody who likes to achieve things, it's great to be a man for that reason. That's part of God's design for us, you know, neurodivers. What is that? [00:59:37] Speaker B: Neurologically? [00:59:38] Speaker C: Neurologically, as his dad is a neurobiologist. [00:59:42] Speaker A: PhD, I certainly did not get that gene. But, but no, that's, that's part of the way that we're wired. And a lot of society, a lot of the world is trying to get us to turn off that part of our wiring, you know, you know, let women take that, let them go for that. No, that's part of the way God designed us is to strive and strive for those things, to reach for those things. So that'd be the main thing that I would say. Jack, how about you? Unless, Joe, you have something to add to that? [01:00:06] Speaker C: No, Genesis 2 and 3 is obviously fantastic. You preach on it for two years, we're halfway there. So we'll finish up soon. But no, those two chapters, they're foundational. Chapter one, two and three and it's like, well, duh, it's creation, but why don't we study it more? If you want to go back to the way it was in the garden, you want to go back to things being very good as God describes. Very good, perfect. What was perfection back in the garden? Well, it was man having purpose, having dominion over the garden. Right? Dominion over the earth and taking care of the garden, naming the animals. It was also God giving him that law, saying, hey, don't eat of this tree. So all of these things are taking place before the woman. We have made masculinity kind of again, when we lower it and we make it underneath women, we miss the fact that a man's calling is he is supposed to have a purpose outside the home. I think this is part of the masculinity that we see. Adam's purpose was the garden, everything outside of the home. Eve's purpose was the home to have to bear children. Women will be preserved through the bearing of children. [01:01:11] Speaker B: Right. [01:01:12] Speaker C: As First Timothy 2 tells us. So with, with the woman's role being in the home, the man's role being out of the home, that doesn't go over real big in the culture. And yet I don't see how you can get away from that within scripture. And we start making the man's mission in life the woman. And that's wrong. That's, that's a misunderstanding. Matter of fact, there's a masculine mandate. Here we go again. There's a great quote they had which is guys who chase girls don't understand that a woman's God given role is for her to be a help to a man on his mission. She wants to help with that mission. If she is your mission, then what is there for her to help you with? Don't drop everything every time she shows a little interest because this communicates she's more important than the mission and she doesn't want that. Assuming it's a noble mission. Leveling up on call of duty is not a mission. It can also communicate that you are willing to compromise the mission for her, which also kills attraction and lowers trust. Man was designed from the very beginning with a mission in mind to go out and to conquer and to have dominion over. And not in a dominant way, but in a. Or in a domineering way, but in a, hey, I'm going to thrive. I'm going to be the best that I could possibly be. I think competition is a very good thing for young boys and for, for men. I think, I believe in sports for young Boys to teach them the importance of competition. So, yeah, Genesis 2 and 3, it lays the foundation for a lot of things. Sorry, Jack, I kind of just took that over. But passing it to you. [01:02:37] Speaker B: So building and, and conquering and going and doing, exploring, I mean, all these things. This is part of the dominion mandate over the world. And so think that's part of this positive view of masculinity, is giving, you know, like guys pursuing purpose, not looking to somebody else for purpose, not asking somebody else, well, what do you think I should do? Going and doing and building and making something better by your presence. And you see men throughout the Bible do that. Of course, Jesus is the greatest example of it. But I brought up, you know, we talked about the negative stereotype of the bug man, of living for the next Netflix show, living for the video game or whatever. That's not the dominion mandate. You're stuck in the basement, go out and do and build and make something better for the people around you. That's one thing that men do is provide and take the world around them and make the place better for people around them, make it more livable, make it more beneficial and just some way of doing that. And every man has the opportunity to do that in some way, some greater, some smaller. None of us are going to be the president, but over your own house, you can make life better for your wife and kids. You can make life better for people in your church, family by taking on responsibility. And I think that's another part of our positive view. I think that's the next one I want to get to is being a man is the assumption of difficult responsibility. The joyful assumption of difficult responsibility is how similar to how one author has put it. And it this idea that there are hard things that need to be done. And so why is it we still accept some of this right when there's a spider that needs to be killed, that's the man's job. When there is something that sounds like somebody breaking into the house at the night or in the middle of the night, that's the man's job. In fact, if it's not, if the woman is getting up and the man is cowering in his bed, we all know that's really bad. We all know that's wrong. That's part of this. The man assumes the difficult duties. He's doing the things to protect her, to protect the kids. That's why men go off to fight wars, to defend their homeland, you know, when they're under attack. These are the things that God has Set for men to do is accept difficult responsibilities. And we see those. And generally speaking, I mean, obviously the military thing has become very blurred right now. But the mostly in culture, we accept you got to kill the spider. You gotta, you know, check on what that noise was at night. But it's the same thing that goes to saying these things in the culture are wrong. Confronting somebody at church and saying that's a sin, and you can't do that. That's not right. Or that's a false teaching. And we're not gonna allow that here. It's telling your wife or your kids no when they need to be told no. And rather than being a nice guy and say, well, my daughter's gonna throw a temper tantrum if I say no ice cream. So, okay. Or you know what? My wife, she's really gonna be unhappy with me if I tell her no, that we're not gonna do that. We're not going to spend this money. We're not going to, you know, X, Y, or Z. I'm not going to do that. Being a man is accepting difficult responsibility because somebody has to. And if it's not you, then who? [01:05:35] Speaker C: The responsibility is the key. I think it is a really good thing we want to teach our young boys. We want to teach young men at church. We want to teach the adult, the older men at church. Taking that responsibility is really good. What's one thing that Adam did? Going back to the garden here, what's the one thing that Adam did? Well, this woman you gave me, right? And then she points the finger and it's passing the buck, right? The buck stops with us as men. It comes down to us, because even Adam, in trying to duck that and saying, well, hey, she's the one that technically did it. Technically, that's true. She ate of the fruit first. But what does Adam get called out for? Adam, basically, you were standing by and watching it happen. You listen to the voice of your. [01:06:14] Speaker A: Wife, therefore, you let her usurp your authority. [01:06:18] Speaker C: Exactly. And Adam gets punished. And actually, we know from Romans 5 through 1, man, sinner entered the world. Adam is on the hook for the first sin, even though Eve technically took of the fruit first because he didn't stand up, because he allowed his wife to take that. And so, man, it's really good that we have responsibility. The buck does stop with us. And Adam should have embraced that responsibility and said, that's on me. I'll take that one and understood that, hey, throwing my wife under the bus, either way, I lose. If it truly was her she's my responsibility. And if it was me, that's my responsibility. So instead of trying to shirk that like Adam, what if we embrace that and recognize the amazingness that responsibility is as a man, as a kid. This is why the culture doesn't want men taking responsibility. They want to keep us kids. They want to keep us in the kid. Jack, as you point out, the childish things, we come out of that into manhood, we say, no, we are in control. Right now. They're calling that control the patriarchy. And if you're not a man, you say, well, I don't want to be a part of the patriarchy. No, no, no. That's not me. That doesn't describe me. Men stand up to that and say, that's stupid. That's ridiculous. It's wrong. I'm going to be a man. I'm going to control the things that I can control, not in a domineering way, but in a. I'm taking care of my family. I'm taking care of my city. You know, I'm taking care of my neighborhood. I'm taking care of my church. [01:07:35] Speaker B: I don't mind the term patriarchy, because, I mean, that's just. Again, it's. It's the father rule of the house. They're the father leaders, not leadership rule. He makes the final decision, and it's. [01:07:44] Speaker C: Stupid to use it against us. [01:07:45] Speaker B: Right? Okay. And so the thing, the bad deal of feminism here is they look at this, and this is what offends people, is when you say, you know, the man is in charge, that he has the responsibility and he has the authority, and the wife has to submit. And what about equality? What about all these things? And what you keep telling men is, you don't get that responsibility, you don't get that authority. You don't get the submission. You don't get the respect that comes with the role. But you still got to kill the spider. You still got to go to war. I mean, there were all those memes that kind of came out when the Russia, Ukraine thing started off was, you know, feminists. And I mean, literally, some of them themselves, you know, this. It wasn't just a joke about them, but some of them saying, you know, if there's a draft, you'll find me in the kitchen. You know, I'll be baking. There is a benefit, you know, on the Titanic, Women and children first. That is one of the benefits. So if you want all of the responsibility of decision making, if you want all those other things, you got to go kill the Spider, you got to go down with the ship. You got to go off to war. You got to go do all these things that. No, that's the deal that we have here is the men do the hard things and they get the responsibility and the honor that comes with the position of doing it. And man, it is really one of the reasons why this is all faltered is men forfeit the responsibility because that some of our temptation. But also when they take responsibility, they're chided for it, for being domineering when they're just doing their job. And so then it comes time for somebody to step up for women to stand up and say, you can't get in the pool against those women. You're a man. We're not doing this. Nobody's there to do it. It's the CS Lewis thing is we create men without chests, and then we're surprised that there's no virtue. We've taken all of this out of the way, and now there's nobody to stand up for anything. Well, it's because you told men they're not allowed to. [01:09:29] Speaker A: So when asking this question, what's good about being a man? What did God create men to do? Another thing that we want to hit is this idea of dominion. You know, the idea that we're not just here to work, but we're also here to rule. We've touched on it quite a bit throughout this episode. But you think about, for us as guys, for us as being masculine men, there's so many areas of our life in which we can seek and have dominion. Joe, you've got a really great acronym that you call pies that deals with the physical, the intellectual, the emotional, and the spiritual side of things. And so that's what we want to hit on for this particular point when it comes to dominion. So I'll start with the first one, Joe, then I'll kick it to you. This idea of having dominion physically. You know, there are so many, and we've talked about this before, but there are so many men, so many guys, so many fathers in the church today who don't really have dominion over themselves physically. They don't really take care of themselves. They don't exercise, they eat, whatever they want. You know, it's the running joke that we've talked about before that most ministers are overweight. We were called to more than that. You know, us as men, we're called to have dominion over ourselves physically. We're called to take care of ourselves. We're called to exercise, to make sure that we are Presenting ourselves in an appealing way as guys. So we go to the gym, we work hard, we know how to use tools, we take care of our family, we provide for our family. All these things that from a physical point of view, we have dominion. And right now we've got a lot of guys that are giving that up. Again, not taking care of themselves, not really exercising, not having dominion over themselves physically. That would be the first one. Joe, hit some of the other ones since again, this is kind of your acronym that we've taken here. [01:11:07] Speaker C: Sure, yeah. The second is intellectual, that I and pies and to grow, to take dominion, to have dominion intellectually I think is to learn, to be well read, to become well studied, to get into, you know, we're not idiots, basically. We're not adults. We are people who are men of the word. We study, you know, yes, we study biblical, but we also study maybe history. We know things about geography, we know things about math, we know things about the sciences. Personally, I think this is part of being a man. You say, well, is that really necessary? Yeah, I think so. I think that's having dominion coming out with a. There are plenty of men who had a 5th grade education who were man's men. I thousand percent agree. It's less about that, it's more about the attitude of wanting to learn, wanting to grow. Because those guys who had a fifth grade education, they may not have been able to do trigonometry, but I bet you they knew how to use probably every tool in their garage, which was. [01:12:04] Speaker A: And they kept learning. They didn't view it as well. I plateaued. So I'm going to stop. You know, this is who I am. You hear that quite a bit. This is who I am. You know, I'm done with school. No, that's 100% agree with you. [01:12:14] Speaker C: Yeah, exactly. My, my dad graduated high school, never went to college and is one of the smartest men that I know because he just didn't stop learning. He read and read and read. And that to me, the intellectual, working on that intellectual part of yourself. Being a smart man is part of being a man. That's part of taking or having dominion. There's an interesting. I'm trying to remember who it was, maybe Ignatius, somebody like that. And it was the idea of take three hours a day. One to work on your intellect, which is to read, one to work on your spiritual, that's to study and pray, and one to work on your physical. And that is obviously, you know, working out and such. And that's a really good Starting point, maybe for. Maybe that's a little bit difficult, but either way, just three hours a day, how much could we have mastery over ourselves, have dominion? [01:13:01] Speaker B: I mean, if generally speaking, you go back to all these concepts we've had of the chauvinist guy and all the bug man and all the ones we talked about, if they started with 15 minutes a day of each of those things, think about how much of an improvement it would be. I mean, just big time. How much book reading gets done, how much working out gets done, how much prayer time gets done. I mean, just 15 minutes. Start there. If you have nothing and you start. [01:13:25] Speaker C: With the small things, this goes to the Jordan Peterson point. We're so busy on, like, fixing the world, right? We want to have ideas and we want to figure out the Russia, Ukraine situation, how we're going to fix that. And it's like, how about you go clean your room, go make your bed, take control of the things you can, and instead of the slacktivism, how about we get busy taking care of some of the smaller things at home? And even the very idea of making your bed, how much more does that? I think both of you guys do as well. You know, I make sure that's a point every single morning. I make the bed because it's a state of mind. It's the small things that we can take mastery over that is important in our purview, kind of in our world. [01:14:04] Speaker A: I typically have my wife do it. [01:14:07] Speaker C: Atta boy, atta boy. There we go. [01:14:10] Speaker A: It's a part. [01:14:12] Speaker C: A part of being a man is making your wife do everything. No. Then we get into emotional, though. So we've talked about physical, emotional or physical intellectual for dominion. Emotional. Be there for others. Listen, right? Have an ear. Be willing to listen to people. If we're always talking, then we're not really listening, right? We're not actually communicating with people back and forth. Understand your own emotions. There's this, once again, another stereotype of a man who just basically, the only emotion he knows is anger. That's not appropriate. That's not a man. That's not a man. They can try to say that's a man of anger is a manly emotion. Typically, that's not to say women can't get angry, but it is intended to drive us. Same way Jesus got angry and he drove them out of the temple. Right? The money changers. Anger is a. Can be used very positively, but we also have a lot of other emotions. We also feel sadness, we feel hurt. We feel, you know, strong desires for Things back and forth. We feel stressed, we feel anxious, we feel worried, we feel all sorts of stuff, right? We feel shame and guilt and there's. Look up an emotions wheel online if you're interested in the emotions. There's about, you know, 200 of them. But understand your emotions. Understand it's okay to cry at times. A man should not be somebody who's breaking down in tears all the time, I don't think. But it's okay to cry from time to time. Have a good sense of humor. Men who just, you know, are so stoic all the time, that's. That doesn't make you a man either just because you don't know how to laugh. Have a good sense of humor. I think that's. Those are playing other into other stereotypes. But understand your emotions. Have a mastery over your emotions. Recognize the role that emotions play and don't cut those off. This is what creates so many, so many issues with our sons and our daughters as we cut ourselves off emotionally. And we think that we're men because men don't cry. And men are tough and men do this and men do that and I'll give you something to cry about and all we have is happy and angry. That's all we ever see our dads show, right? Be men who are willing to show other emotions and explain their emotions to their kids. Last and finally is this idea of spiritual. The S and pies take dominion. Spiritually. Be leaders in the church. Be leaders in your home. Be leaders in your marriage. Spiritually, be able to teach. Every man should be able to get up and teach a Bible class. Oh, I just can't do it. Well, well, guy, you've been in the church for 50 years. How can you not get up and teach a class? How can you not get up and give a five minute devo on a Wednesday night? Well, that's just not, not what I do. Shame on you. I'm sorry. But as a man, you should be able to teach. You should be able to. [01:16:38] Speaker B: At the very least, if you, if you can't do that, stage fright, whatever else, you should be able to have something else else to show for it some other way. You're serving the church. There might be a guy who is the best one on one evangelist or the guy that's calling all the sick people or whatever else and he doesn't want to get up and speak. Okay, I'm cool with that. But if you're not doing that, if you're not doing anything and won't do the other things as well do something. [01:17:00] Speaker C: Sure. [01:17:01] Speaker A: But I got. Go ahead, Joe. [01:17:02] Speaker C: Go for it. [01:17:03] Speaker A: I was just saying don't be the guy that just sits in a pew. Don't be the guy that picks up his Bible twice a week and it's the two times that he comes to worship. Grow your relationship with God at home. Make sure that you're reaching out to those around you. The church is full of so many men who once again think that as we've hit on before, they think it is their job for the church to serve them. They think it's their job to sit and listen to other people's classes, pick up their Bible once or twice a week, and they go home and that's. That's the end of it. That's not what we are. We are not called to be that as men. We're called to have dominion spiritually, to be leaders in that way. [01:17:35] Speaker C: That's perfect. Well, you know, the other aspect of this is disciple. Be willing to disciple. And to your point, Jack, as far as it goes with teaching, the discipling is teaching, being able to teach. I understand stage fright. I lean more toward. Hey, First Timothy 3 is a blueprint for every man. If 1 Timothy 2 at the end of 1 Timothy 2, 9 and following is for every woman to follow. I think First Timothy 3, the Elder and deacon qualifications is for what every man should strive to be. [01:18:02] Speaker B: But it also says, let not many of you become teachers. I think that, you know, that's in James. And so I think. [01:18:07] Speaker C: I agree. But able to teach, being part of the elder, elder qualifications, I think that's what we should be striving for. Not that every man is going to. [01:18:14] Speaker A: Be just in the elder qualifications either. Second Timothy 2, a servant of the Lord must be what, Able to teach. Right? [01:18:20] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:18:20] Speaker A: So often we jump just to a lot. [01:18:22] Speaker C: That's. [01:18:22] Speaker A: That's for elders. No. Would we call ourselves servants of the Lord? I hope so. [01:18:26] Speaker B: Right. But I would also say, yeah, able to teach doesn't always mean stand up in front of people publicly. [01:18:32] Speaker C: I agreed. Agreed. At the same time, I think, you know, stage fright, I get all that. But name another reason other than stage fright why a man should not be able to prep a lesson after being in the church for 50 years. [01:18:44] Speaker B: But on the other hand, it's not open mic night. And I think it's important to send the message that what we do here is important. And that's one reason why I'm very big on, like, not letting little kids get up and do it. There's a lot of reasons why I don't think you should have, you know, the 10 year old getting up and preaching. But like, this is very serious, this should be taken very seriously. To stand in front of everybody and proclaim the word. And you know, just because this guy can doesn't necessarily mean he shouldn't. That's my, my thinking's on, that's evolved more. I, I'm not a pulpit hog. You know, there's people, there's elders here that, that do a good job or. [01:19:19] Speaker A: Whatever, but you sure podcast hog. Good grief. [01:19:22] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:19:23] Speaker C: Goodness. And I'm not saying a man, I'm not saying every man should do it. I'm saying every man should be potentially able to do it if called upon in the right moment. If you are having twins or something, something soon, who knows, you know, if something crazy like that happens and you have to call somebody in the last, at the last second, you know, how many men in the conversation, hopefully you've. [01:19:42] Speaker A: Got a lot of options. [01:19:43] Speaker C: Exactly. That's, that's my point. And so to get back to kind of, you know, I think this is a good tangent, but at the same time to kind of bring it back toward this masculine idea. This also goes right in will with your idea or with what you're talking about. And also this ability to disciple others. I think it's important that we have men who are willing to teach other men, younger men, of course, but also for the older people, for the older men of the church to have a knowledge that the younger men don't have. Part of being a man is spiritually growing up where it's. And I made mention this before, you know, one of the, There's a famous Baptist preacher, I think, who has a quote on bricklayers, right? Vodi Bakam. He's got a quote on bricklayers. And you're bricklayer for 50 years and you know, you come up and you're going to teach somebody. Well, I don't know nothing about no bricks. You've been doing it for 50 years. How do you not know anything about bricks? Like we're called to be more as men spiritually and to have to take dominion, to have a deep relationship with God, a deep prayer life. And I'm hoping that by the time I see grandkids, Lord willing, I'm able to teach my grandkids for them to see. Every morning I wake up and I'm praying to God, right? I want to have this life that just exudes this presence of God in my life, that he's important That's a man. Because you are in union with God and you're taking dominion spiritually over the again, the church and over your family and over your marriage. And you're discipling others, you're passing it down to future generations. You're able to teach in front of the congregation, to get up and to speak and to say the things that you need to, you know, that you need to say all of those things. So pies, the physical, intellectual, emotional and spiritual, all of those, I think, take place, or all of those have A dominion is important for each of those aspects in a man's life. [01:21:34] Speaker B: Right. And so the elder qualifications, I think we would all agree that whether a man is going to be an elder or not, every man in the church should look at those and man, like, pin them to the wall and go, that's stuff I should be pursuing. And it's very interesting how much of those are about self, master, which is a lot of what you were just talking about there. Because it brings up, you know, the first Timothy 3:1 brings up his relationship with alcohol, you know, his relationship with his wife, his relationship with his children. Money. [01:22:00] Speaker A: Uses his words. [01:22:01] Speaker B: Yeah, the way he uses words, money, his temper, you know, is he gentle? Is he pugnacious? The new American Standard says, is he, you know, just grumpy? Is he looking for a fight? [01:22:14] Speaker C: Reputation with others. Right, right. [01:22:16] Speaker B: And so all of these things are, does he have control of himself? Has he, you know, does he have a weakness like alcohol that Satan is really going to pick at? Well, as a man, look at those things in your life and say, I have to master myself and all these things. And with all these things, I think you brought up the point, Joe, of kind of getting your own house in order. And it really is a great point. If you want to complain about the world, the president, the, you know, the government, you want to complain about morality all around you, all these things. If you're a man, you have a wife, you have children, you have a family, and you're not regularly opening the Bible and praying with your family. Stop complaining about the world and start doing that. I mean, we've all got these things. And I think your pious thing is great. A physical, intellectual, emotional, spiritual. Because the Bible talks about worthless men. And worthless men are those that have nothing to contribute. They can't make things better for the people around them. And none of us should want to be worthless men. We should all be looking at it and saying, what can I contribute to the lives of my life, of my wife? How Can I, you know, lead her in a way that makes things better for her? How can I provide a home for her that gives her room to operate and blesses her? What about my kids? How can I make things better for them? How can I teach them the word? How can I train them in these ways that, like you said, intellectual. I know things so I can teach them things. The people around me, my church, family, the loss that I can evangelize, all of this is an outward look to say, how can I make things better for the people around me? Because that's something that men do. And it starts with self mastery. It starts with improving yourself. It starts with growing and taking on again. It goes back to the point before responsibility to make things better for everybody around us. [01:23:57] Speaker A: It's a great point, Jack. It's a great point. So to recap here, we spent the last few minutes kind of describing things to run towards. We started out with the negative stereotypes of this is what the world pushes. This is maybe, unfortunately what sometimes the church pushes that are negative things that men should not strive to be. The things that we've just covered is what biblically being a man is all about. It's about being mission minded, looking for something to achieve, something to strive for. It's about, you know, taking dominion and the ways that we just talked about, it's about taking responsibility. As Jack brought up earlier, you have the responsibility for your home and for your family. But the dominion aspect that we just ended with, again, physically, intellectually, emotionally and spiritually, so many ways in which if you're a guy that is listening to this and you're thinking, man, I could really do a better job in those areas. Hopefully you can use this PIES acronym, physical, intellectual, emotional, spiritual, to take a self evaluation. Are there aspects of yourselves, physically, intellectually, emotionally, spiritually that you realize I can really do a better job of that? Then again, hopefully that's helpful. But these are things that we can run towards as being mental. As we brought up before, we don't want to spend all of our time describing something that we need to run away from. You know, we didn't really even have time to dive into so many examples in God's word of men that we should strive to be like Joseph, who had every opportunity to engage in sexual promiscuity and chose not to. Job, who when his wife told him, man, just curse God and die, he said, no, I'm not going to do that. And he stood up to his wife, obviously. David, Joshua and Caleb. You know, when 10 spies in the whole nation of Israel are saying, no, we can't take the land of Canaan. They stand up against the flow, against everybody who's saying, no, we can't. They say, yes, we can. Let's go do it. We got God on our side, Paul. Jesus, of course, so many other examples that we could get into. But I want to thank these two guys as we kind of wrap this episode up, because this is a very tough subject, you know, with the. The story about Leah Thomas, the swimmer and the. The Supreme Court justice nominee and all the things that are going on in our society. This is a tough subject, but it's one that absolutely has to be addressed. We started out with the question, does gender matter? Hopefully, from a biblical perspective, we've answered the question, yes, gender absolutely does matter. And it's for all these reasons and for the guys that are listening that have just been beaten up and battered by the world and society with about how bad it is to be a man and about how much we need to apologize for being mental. Understand that that's not the case, Biblically speaking. We have so much to be grateful for about the fact that we're men. So much to take responsibility for, so much to have dominion over, as we've just covered. So next week we are going to get into the other side of the coin. What does it mean to be a woman from a biblical perspective? Femininity as opposed to masculinity. What is God's design for women? What is God's design for the roles of women? How does that compare to what society teaches? Again, kind of like what we did with this episode. So we encourage you to tune in for that one. Like I said, we'll get into that next week. Unless there's anything else that these guys have to offer or had to add, that is. That is where we're going to wrap this episode and we will talk to you guys next week.