[00:00:08] Speaker A: Welcome in to Think Deeper podcast. Jack Wilkie here, joined by Joe Wilkie and Will Harab, presented by Focus Press. As you can see over Will's head, if you're watching the video version here, we also have a new sponsor, our first external sponsor. So listen for that ad here in the middle of it. But before I hand it to Joe to get a start on it, this is the last day of our Black Friday sales. If you're listening to it on Release day, code BF. As for Black Friday, BF 2024. 2024 gets you 25 off in the Focus Press Store. If you're listening to this later in the week and think, man, I missed the sale. Our official Christmas sale prices start the day after. So go shop the Focus press store. Focus press.org shop again. If you're catching it Monday, get in before midnight. BF 2024 for Black Friday 2025% off. Anything books by Joe, Will, me, Brad, whatever. We got 25% off. So I really appreciate a lot of folks have taken advantage of that. And again, if you miss it, check out our other sales starting on Tuesday. So that's all I got to tell you about up front. I'll hand it to Joe to get started.
[00:01:10] Speaker B: Yeah, so we've had this one on the radar for a long time and keep pushing it back and kind of bring it forward, push it back. And it's a little bit esoteric because we were kicking it around. We've been kicking it around for the last week or so in prep and thinking about all these different online trends, making a listing of the different online trends.
And so what we wanted to do with this episode is really explore both the good and the bad of various online trends. If you're on Instagram, if you're on Facebook, if you're on Twitter or Reddit or Quora or any of the other ones, you're going to see specific things pop up time and time again. Some of those are going to be, and Dr. Brad has spoken on this, the trad wife movement. I know he's posted on Facebook. Go check out his Facebook page and such, because he's posted on it. But the trad wife or traditional wife movement, and then there's also the manosphere movement, which is men kind of getting back to masculine things. Andrew Tate is, is a big mover in that one. But it's not just him. He's right. He's on the far end. Correct. He's on the far end. But then it, it includes guys like Joe Rogan. It includes Jordan Peterson. Jordan Peterson. Yeah, he's another big one. There's a lot of other names that probably won't mean much to our listeners, but guys that are really just trying to bring back masculinity. What does it look like to be a man? And they call it the manosphere. And so we see two of these things pitted once against or against each other. But there are several more we want to get into. There's the Dinks movement, we've spoken briefly on that. The double income, no kids, the red pill kind of goes along with the manosphere, the high church movement where we're seeing a lot of people move toward orthodoxy and Catholicism. There's the influencers and more of the just kind of the materialistic mindset where you're seeing people really go all in on having to buy everything or having to have the name brand stuff or whatever it is. There's the healthy living movement, there is the basically trying to label yourself with diagnoses, adhd, ocd, things like that. We're seeing that pop up a lot on social media. And so there's all these different movements. And I think as a Christian, it can be difficult to join social media, get on and you're inundated with these things. What do we do with that as Christians? What do we do with it? Do we engage with it? Do we try to look like them? Do we pull away from them completely? Are there good or bad elements to it? We want to explore all of that. But the lead off question, I guess when we're considering the trad wife movement, this movement where women are getting back to homesteading, they're getting back to wanting to stay at home and raising their kids and making meals from scratch and all sorts of things like that, and they're keeping houses. There's that and then there's the manosphere where there's masculinity and fellas, I guess my main question that I want to lead off, why is the world doing things more toward Christian roles than the churches? What are your thoughts on that? We're seeing this big time, that it's exploding on Instagram, Twitter, things like that in the world. They don't have God as their basis and yet they seem to get it right more than the church does. Why do you think that is?
[00:04:06] Speaker C: So I think there, first of all, I think it's interesting that. Joe, I appreciate you putting this outline together and then putting a lot of these on here. There's a ton on here. But I think the reason why you're zeroing in on The Trad wife movement, the manosphere. Those are kind of the most well known and those have kind of been in the zeitgeist, the manosphere specifically now for quite a while. And then the trad wife movement over the last several months is not, is not really something that's going away. And what I think is interesting about, I was reading some articles about specifically the trad wife movement prep for this episode and it was funny to me that immediately kind of some of the takes were pointing out the negative things about it. Well, you know, they don't actually say it. You know, they're not actually stay at home moms. Those two things are different. Well, you know, they're not, they're not actually not working because they're doing the filming, the editing and all these things and kind of looking at the negative side of what that movement might be, which is kind of putting the best face out there. The articles talked about how there's never a screaming kid in any of the social media videos. There's never a dirty house. It's all these beautiful ranch style, you know, houses that are just make it look so perfect. And what I, I guess what I wanted to say as we start this episode, as we talk about this, the manosphere maybe, you know, as we get into a lot of these other things is I do think that there is value in Christians being able to take a look at some of these things, take a look at some of these trends and I like identify the good, identify the bad and attach yourself to the good and remove yourself from the bad. Like by that I mean, sure, there are some really probably not great things going on with the Manosphere. Maybe there's some rough things, some things that we don't agree with with the trad wife movement. That does not mean we have to throw everything out. And so Joe, to get to your question of why is the world doing more towards Christians roles in the churches? It goes back to something I've harped on before and it's that the church never gets specific about anything with their teaching. The church overall does not get specific about how a Christian man is supposed to live, about how a Christian woman is supposed to live. It's all kind of well, you know, serve God together. And you know, Jack's referenced the quote before from fairly prominent person in the Church of Christ that essentially a fully mature Christian man and a fully mature Christian woman shouldn't really look any different. That's not true. And that's completely different than what you see in the trad wife movement and the manosphere movement. And so people gravitate towards that because they say, you know what? That's more in line with reality. That's much more in line with reality. And yet all the church can seem to give people is kind of vague, generic, love God, love others, serve people, you know, be a good person, that type of thing. And there's not a lot of specifics. And that's a generalization. There are some people out there that are giving very specific and kind of teaching and instruction to men and women. But for the most part, that would be my answer, Joe, is because the world, these trends, Joe Rogan, Jordan Peterson, Elon Musk, guys like this who are kind of getting into the nitty gritty, specific things about what men and women should be, that's who people are going to gravitate towards because there's specificity there. Jack, what kind of thoughts do you have to add to that?
[00:07:03] Speaker A: Yeah, there's really good points there. There's two things that come to mind for me. The first, I hate the word influencer, especially people trying to be an influencer. I'm gonna influence other people with my life, man. I can teach you some things, but as far as. Look at my life. But I think what this is showing us is there's this.
The. The curtain is being pulled away. There's not a mask on it anymore. Like, since the invention of television, probably radio before that, mass media has had this influence on us as people. And you go back, I mean, New Testament times, ancient history, all that, you can see influencers and how they shape people's thoughts. Well, now it's so much more direct. It's kind of. You can see who somebody follows. You can see where they're getting their values, things like that. And I think that's helpful. I think, like, acknowledging the fact that mental. We don't. Like, we are a product of the influences on us. Everyone kind of like, oh, I came to this idea that, you know, women like, boy, it's great to wear dresses and start baking bread again. Like, that's. That's a fine idea to come to. But, like, the. That idea was always available to you. Like, why? And so realizing the influences upon us, I think we very much all think that we're our own people and come to our own conclusions. No, people who didn't do that before and started doing that, now, it's. It's from influence and kind of paying attention to what you're taking in. That's point one. Point number two. And this is the Joe's question about like the church not touching this stuff. And to the degree and the specificity Will was talking about, we can be real book, chapter, verse, kind of tunnel vision, which is, I mean, book chapter, verse is great. You need Bible and all that. But Romans talks about the, you know, God's invisible attributes that. But from creation you can see God at work. You can see God's fingerprints on everything. And there's so much of that in the world that in Romans 2, it talks about the Gentiles being a law to himself. There's like natural things. We talk about natural revelation and special revelation. Special revelation is the words of the prophets, is the inspired scriptures, things like that. Natural revelation is, wow, there's a sunset. That means there's a God. Well, there's also, you look at a man and a woman, he's bigger and more muscular than her and she's different. Okay, that means something. I should do something with that. And as Christians, we kind of do the natural revelation thing. We're going to hide from it a little bit. We're going to kind of tie that hand behind our backs and only stick to the scriptures. But the funny thing is these things inform each other. Special revelation. Reading the Bible helps you see nature through the right lens. But looking up from nature and looking around and observing and noticing things that are noticeable, what a man is, what a woman is, health. And I mean, there's a million different trends we could talk about in this online trends, idea, things that nature teaches you. And what we did for a long time, for a hundred years, however long was this modernism then post modernism, if we get to do our own thing through science, we can figure this all out. And everyone, you know, it came to the point of we can finally, we can, we can just be whatever you want to be, have your own truth. And it's like, well, that didn't work. Let's go back to the drawing board. And back to the drawing board is men are men, women are women, all these other things it's okay to learn from nature. And I think as Christians, like, we're, we're again, intentionally ignoring that a lot of times. And to say, well, if you don't have book chapter verse, like, I don't need book chapter verse to tell you a man is a man, is a woman is a woman. Like, yeah, I can give you book chapter verse that will get you to these points, but natural revelation is a good thing too. Does that make sense?
[00:10:25] Speaker B: Yeah, no, I think that's a great point because I was going to Say the Bible doesn't say, hey, go hit the gym. And yet I think there's a lot of principles there because we'd say, well, it's of little value, right? That's what Paul says is. But spiritual is of great value like that. That's really where it's at. Paul's not trying to put down, buffeting the body. He's. He's putting down. Or he's simply saying, that's great, you can have a six pack. But if your spiritual life isn't correct, at the same time, we look at that and go see, I can be £400 and be, you know, that's perfectly fine. Okay, but are you working on some of those things? Are you seeing that there is a natural element to, hey, it's really good for us to be healthy people because we turn toward healthy living. You look at all the supplements, you look at the, all of the different guys online, a lot of them, you know, people say are kooks. Things like that. RFK is coming in, right? He's, he's a big name in this. And that's one of the reasons why, interestingly, he's uniting both the Democrats and Republicans, because there are those on the crunchy spectrum that are Democrats that are saying, well, this is great that we have a guy who's questioning these things, questioning the fda, questioning seed oils, questioning all the stuff. And so we look at healthy living and healthy lifestyle and whether. I agree, I agree with most of what he says, but that is still coming out of a place. Object to your point, this natural revelation, like, it's really good to be healthy. It's good to know where our food is made. It's good to have less ingredients and not all of these names that you can't even pronounce on the back of the box. Like, it's actually a really good thing and that's a normal way to live life that we're trying to get back to. But we look at it and it has to be an online trend or some, some guy has to come into this sphere in order to bring it about, when in reality people are clamoring for this in the first place because it's real.
[00:12:08] Speaker C: Joe, I am curious. I don't know if that was kind of your answer to your own question, but I'm curious if you had an answer to your question as well. But the one thing that I wanted to say to kind of add to that, to further flesh out my point of we should be able to look at some of these things and See the good and then kind of discard the bad, spit out the bones, however you want to put that. We are unable to do that with the. You can't buy that mentality that we've talked about before. But with stuff like what can you really bind? That I can't be £300. Can you really bind? That I can't do. And, like, the point is, of course not. Of course there. I mean, there's a level I think you probably can bind, you know, being unhealthy. But for the most part, to Jack's point, there's no book, chapter, verse. And so people always want to jump to, well, is it a sin? No. Okay, well, then if not, we can't really talk about it. That does lend itself away from the ability to look at some of these trends, look at some of these things, and peel out the good and take away the bad because of this, you can't bind that mentality. But, Joe, I was curious. Did you have. Did you have an answer to that question?
[00:13:02] Speaker B: I actually loved your answer. I was more in line with Jack, which is, this is just the way of things. Romans 1 is the passage that came to my mind when I was thinking about it, thinking about that question, like, God has made it very evident that he's out there and he's made life very evident on what that looks like. And so we can go back to the garden and see a man's to provide for his wife. He's going to protect his wife all the way throughout. Men were to protect the women.
That's pretty standard. Like, we see that, but yet we have a lot of guys that.
I'm sorry, if somebody's knocking on the door, it's probably going to be their masculine wife going to. And I'm not talking necessarily in the church. This is just in culture in general. Or they make a joke out of it. Yeah, that's going against the natural order of things. And so mine is more toward the natural order. One point that I love that you made, Will, I want to come back around this good, bad idea, but one of the points that you made was like, we minimalize things. Minimalist. I think, as Jack's talked about that theological minimalism, I think that was on Dogma. Right. Your guys, other podcasts and what that looks like. And so we don't want to get into it. I love how you said it, the nitty gritty. Whereas you can go to a Joe Rogan and get a workout, you know, a full workout list of, hey, this is what works. Because he's got some guy on there that's a workout guru, and you can get another guy who's kicking around the idea of aliens and all sorts of weird stuff. But it's like, you know what? We're curious guys. We want to know these things. And there's a high level of masculinity. And I'm not like the biggest Joe Rogan listener ever, but he's got content that guys naturally are going to gravitate toward. And we would just rather not touch that in the least because, well, is it spiritual? Is it not? It really doesn't do to think on those things. Like, yeah, but guys naturally are. And I would rather them find it from the church and from a godly perspective than find it elsewhere. I kind of look at it the same as, well, you know, your kids need to know all about evolution. And, yeah, I want them to hear that from me, from a positive thing, you know, positive view of creationism and things like that instead of creationism is stupid. Evolution is right in the public schools and all the other things that they get. Why don't we lead the charge on these things? But we're too busy trying to minimize things. But I want to get back, well, because you made this point, and I'll throw this question out to you guys, there's obvious good to these movements. I think it is opening people's eyes to, like, opening women's eyes, that, hey, that is an option. Instead of you getting ridiculed because you didn't go to college or you're not chasing the career. Like, there is theoretically an option out there where you're going to have people to back your opinion, to stay home, to raise your kids, even a homestead, to do all those things, which I think is fantastic. So there's a lot of good there. There's a lot of good in drawing men back to masculinity. Like, it's a good thing to be a man.
I don't know if you guys have any other good things that you'd add to it, but I'm also curious because I do see the bad here. I'll throw my bad out then. I want to ask you guys your opinion on that. The biggest issue for me is there's no gospel at the center. So all of these things are fairly hollow. Because if you don't have God at the center of these things, what's it all for?
Once again, it goes to the six pack, which is a great thing if a guy has it right. But at the same time, if you don't have a reason for that, which is ultimately to glorify God and to create healthier, stronger families and to live out, you know, generationally speaking, like, to. To really set yourself up generationally. I think you're missing out because it's all kind of a. An ecclesiastes standpoint of great. It's all feudal. It's. It's all, you know, worthless, basically, unless God is at the center of it. And that's what's lacking in this. So I see that as a major negative. But what do you guys think?
[00:16:18] Speaker A: Yeah, I think the. I like the point. You know, the natural revelation gets you closer to God, but that you do need special revelation. Like, somebody's not going to find their way to Christ without the gospel, without the Bible and the truth of it. And so I think you take, like, something like transgenderism, like, we followed this thing out to its last logical conclusion of, like, boy, anything goes. You can make yourself whatever you want. And there's a lot of people. I mean, you just see somebody that's pretending to be the other thing. You go, yeah, this really. This was a bad idea. Let's turn around and your eyeballs tell you something. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. And again, nature is telling you. And so you start working back to, okay, if not that, we can't just go one peg back up this slippery slope. We've got to climb all the rungs. And so you do, and you get back to a man's man, a woman's a woman. Why is that that way? And you. It's really interesting, some of these podcast guys you've mentioned, Chris Williamson, real big into evolutionary psychology and, like, how the brain evolution has brought us to this. Like, come on, man. You can see the design here. This wasn't just, okay, over billions of repetitions, mankind figured this out, that the women should take care of the kids and nest and the men should go hunt and stuff like that. It goes further back than that. This wasn't an evolutionary development. And so it gets them close. They are working back closer, and seeing all of this is a train wreck. Every man is right, you know, does what's right in his own eyes isn't working. But you're right, there needs to be an answer to that. That's why the church has to discuss this stuff, because if they're looking for the answers and they go back to, okay, a man's a man, a woman's a woman, and this, that, and the other thing, and health is good, and all of these things about the world, they're seeing and they look at the church as like, no, you don't have to believe all that. No, I mean it's just, you know, the gospel is just something that affects inside of these four walls. Like we can't help them. And so having this preaching, engaging with these ideas from the biblical perspective has incredible value.
[00:18:11] Speaker B: I had two separate thoughts on that real fast. One, the first thing that came to my mind is ancient apocalypse has been big, you know, coming up big. He's another guy that's like, it's looking you right in the face, man. He talks about a global flood. He talks about all these things like.
[00:18:23] Speaker A: Hello, that is briefly.
[00:18:25] Speaker B: Ancient Apocalypse is a show on Netflix that Graham Hancock. Hancock, yeah. Graham Hancock is the guy and he's an archaeologist that goes around and he's kind of like re explaining the origins of the world kind of in a way. But he doesn't necessarily do that. He says in the last 20, he's basically like 22,000 years. We know that we basically had giants and they created amazing things and there's all these pyramids everywhere. Stuff that like is right down our pathway as Christians that we can speak to a global flood and weird things like, wow, that's unexplainable. Evolution doesn't really explain that. Like yeah, we can, but he doesn't go all the way there. So I was just gonna make that point real fast.
Will, I could say my other thought. Would you?
[00:19:06] Speaker C: Yeah, no, I was just gonna say when you ask about kind of what are the, what are the negative sides to this and maybe the bad sides of the downsides.
As much as I do agree, and I agree, I think Yalls point about there not being a gospel at the core is the overarching negative side. But the other thing I wanted to point out just from again, as you look at the con list, so to speak, there is a lot on social media that is not necessarily layered in reality. And by that I mean I would love for my kids to say Jackson for instance, to maybe learn a lot about what it means to be a man, you know, manosphere related, like what it means to be a man, obviously with the gospel at the core. But I would love for him to learn that from a 45, 50 year old older man at his church. I would love for him to learn that obviously for me as his dad or from his grandfather, from. You know, we're big on mentors here and to me that is one of the bigger downsides. Same thing with the trad wi thing. You know, my daughter I would love for her to, to learn those things obviously from her mother, but then I'm not really necessarily excited about her learning those things and kind of getting excited about those things from what is kind of a fake online Instagram reel. Look at the perfectly curated setting, perfectly curated lighting and all these things. And you know, I understand that that's kind of how social media works and I don't think we need to throw everything out. But I do think it removes the need sometimes for the older generation stepping in the mentorship, the, you know, I think it teaches good things again when it comes to the trad wife and manosphere. Like the roots are good and what it's trying to present and push is a good thing. I just wish that we were able to get those things from people within our congregation, close real life relationships as opposed to Instagram reels, screen relationships. But this does speak to this whole idea that not only is the church not really willing to do this, you know, from a leadership minister's perspective, they're not going to teach on these things. There's a lot of older women, a lot of older men that just, that's not really their thing to kind of reach out to the younger generation, teach them these things. And in their defense, they probably look around like, well, there's all these people online doing it. They're just going to learn from them. And so I just think it creates a backwards, off balance version of what I want my kids to be learning from the older generation, if that makes sense.
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This is a really interesting point because one of the criticisms we get is you're too negative. But this is why young people are looking for. This is they're realizing we hit Rock bottom, telling girls that they're the same as guys and telling guys that, you know, take backseat to the girls. And all of these male, female things that have been taught for generations are hitting that dead end I talked about. And people are looking for solutions. And when you look to the older generation, they're like, no, it worked great for us. Like, no, it didn't. That's why we're here. And it's the same thing where we talk about, man, the churches are dying. We got to do something about this. Oh, boy. Saw a lot of people at the last lectureship, so things are going great. Like, you have to engage with the fact that we have gone astray on this. We are wandering in the wilderness on gender ideology. And why are people turning to YouTube? Exactly what will saying, you don't have older people in the church realizing, man, this whole ball in chain, happy wife, happy life, all these marital tropes that got so wrong and every. I mean, we've torn all these things apart for years. But, like, you have to admit that there's a problem because young men especially, you saw the numbers in the last election and the stuff about Gen Z boys going more conservative because they're realizing we've been sold garbage. We, what we got handed, it doesn't work. It's all fake. It's all falling apart around us. We got to find something else. And so they'll look to a. A horrific person like Andrew Tate, like you say, somebody who they don't have a relationship with, somebody who's got some good advice and some really, really bad advice. And again, doesn't exemplify it because, man, again, as I said a minute ago, the church won't take these things up. We have to. We have to. The problems the world is diagnosing are the right problems. Their solutions are not the right solutions. We haven't even gotten to diagnosing the problems yet. And that's the issue we have here.
[00:24:00] Speaker B: That's such a good point. This is why I'm so passionate about things like Song of Solomon and teaching sex is. We do the same thing. We don't want to talk about it. It's like, yeah, well, the world did. And so we have fornication that's rampant in the church and pornography use. It's rampant in the church. And it's yet another thing where the church said, well, we're just not going to talk about that. Like, yeah, and how did that turn out? The world is willing to talk about it. And so the Andrew Tates of the world. And even the men who go their own way, that's another movement. These. These young men that are looking at marriage going, no, thanks. What, so my wife can divorce me 15 years down the line, take the kids, take the car, take the keys, or take the house, take everything. And I'm left with nothing. No, thanks. I'm not going to do that anymore. I'm sorry. I put that fully on the generation before. That's fully on them, because they did exemplify that. That's like, hey, guess what happens if you get married and this guy turns 21 and he's looking at his parents who've been married for 25 years, they haven't been happy for 20 of those years, and they finally get divorced the moment that he's outside the house.
Yeah, he's looking at that. I don't want to get married 25 years for nothing. My parents have been miserable the entire time, so they didn't exemplify any of these things. And it goes back to our podcast of last week. The individual culture, individualism that our culture is soaked in is killing us. But that is the natural part of families that are shattered, families that are broken, moms outside the home, dads who aren't taking stands, aren't getting these things right, is we turn toward individualism. Which is exactly your point, Will. We will turn toward losers like Andrew Tate. We will turn toward people online, these influencers. We know nothing of them. Like you said, everything's curated, everything's perfect. But that's better than nothing. That's better than the woman at our church that divorced her husband after 25 years, and they hated each other the entire time. Like, I'd rather see somebody do it well on Instagram than do it horrible in real life. Unless the person who did it horribly in real life was able to go, guys, this is where I went wrong. I should have done this. I should have done that differently. I really wish this would happen. And, you know, instead of the guys that are married for 50 years going, yeah, the old ball and chain. Like, how about you encourage us and teach us something? And I know we go on and on and on about this, but we're serious. Like, we have to get back to mentorships in the church because we're turning toward all these online influencers who, at the core, are fake and really not great people. And you'll see this. The longer you follow somebody, you always see where they turn it commercial, materialistic. They turn it away because God's not at the core. They're not doing it because they're founding on godly principles. They're doing it because it's the next trend. And just like cupcakes and bacon was the trend. They, you know, it's not going to last long. We do have the ability to have it last long because ours is founded on Christ. It's founded on the Bible. Unless it's not. Unless the only reason our kids in the church are doing it is because their favorite online influencer is turning to a trad wife. That's the perfect time for an older woman to come in and go, that's right. And let me tell you why. Let me tell you about Titus 2 and get into that. But we need the older people to step up.
[00:26:46] Speaker C: So I don't, I don't know. This is about our, what, fourth week of kind of functioning without it. One out, one. One outline where we're all working off of. And we're, we're really enjoying the style, but it does make for a bit of a different, different feel. So, Joe, I didn't know if you were planning on kind of rapid firing some of these other ones. I did want to ask though, just before we get to that, if that's the plan you talk. You have on here this idea of idealism versus inspiration. And that is something that I. Okay, cool. That's. That's where I wanted to take it next. Because me. That's a very interesting.
[00:27:15] Speaker A: Before we get off of the church's response, I want to make one more brief point. Is we said a lot of the church is not addressing this. That's not always true. We're literally giving the opposite. We're giving the bad advice that hasn't worked for people. We're giving men the don't be a man kind of advice. We're giving the women the do anything, be anything. You're the same as a man kind of thing. I mean, I can point you to stuff like. It's just. It's crazy. That again, is why people aren't finding. Looking to the church for these kinds of answers. And so I think it needs to be said as well.
[00:27:45] Speaker B: Let me also, because this is the second point I was going to make and never got back to it. Sorry, I spaced it. This is why it's really important that if preachers are going to be on social media and elders, if they're going to be on social media, they cannot stack their entire timeline with stupid discussions on new heavens and new Earth and on all of these high knowledge, stupid things. You got to be in it where your people are, because if you can't. And youth ministers as well, and they usually do a better job of being caught up with trends. But if you aren't aware of what your kids are coming up against, if you aren't aware of what the 30 year old mom at your church is consuming, you need to know. You need to know what they're looking at and where they're turning. Because we can continue to go, oh, things are fine out there, or things are really bad, but we don't really know where they're getting their information.
We need to be well apprised as preachers. It doesn't mean you have to spend all your time on social media. As a matter of fact, I think that's really bad for preachers to do that. But for the preachers that are kind of in their ivory towers that we've spoken of that never really come into the real world, these are the real world trends that your people are going to be following. It's really important to have an understanding of who these people are, these influencers, the Andrew Tates and people like that. Your young men will know who are they, what do they stand for, where are they going? And how can we commandeer this for good instead of negative?
[00:28:57] Speaker C: Well, it's arguing about what color should we paint the attic when your kitchen's on fire is kind of the way that I would describe that.
[00:29:03] Speaker B: Exactly it.
[00:29:04] Speaker C: Yeah, that's. That's a really good point. So getting back to this idea of idealism versus inspiration and Joe, I know you had some thoughts on this. I don't know if you want me to tee you off here and let you kind of go, but one of the things that I wanted to ask and discuss here is there are elements of the.
[00:29:22] Speaker B: Let's.
[00:29:22] Speaker C: I guess we're going to stick to focusing on these two before we maybe move on to some of these other trends that we have on our list.
They are very idealistic. They are very kind of, again, from the social media perspective, they're only presenting the really good sides. They're only presenting the ultimate, you know, kind of best case scenario. And I think there are people who might really be wanting to go that direction who just look at it and say, man, that's just too idealistic. I'm never going to be them. I'm never going to have that nice of a house. I'm never going to have. I'm never going to be able to do all the baking that the trad wife can do. I'm never going to be as muscular as that guy. There's a lot of idealism in it. And so, Joe, I guess my question for you and I guess for all of us to kind of throw around here, how do we balance this inspiration of I really want to get better in these areas. I really want to.
Maybe there's a woman listening who does want to get back to maybe some more traditional.
Odds are if you're, if you're listening to us on think deeper. You're probably already in that boat. But, you know, let's hypothetically say that, you know, that's the direction you want to go. If you're a man who's really wanting to, you know, maybe take charge of your. Of your family and improve in your. In the masculine department, how do you balance the inspiration without just being kind of weighed down by the fact that everything online is just very idealistic and in a way almost seems. Seems unattainable for people. Does that question make sense? Like, how do you balance that, Joe?
[00:30:44] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:30:44] Speaker B: Yeah. My thought initially and the reason why I asked this way, idealism or the why I put it down, idealism versus inspiration. I think it is a very good thing to take inspiration from these people and to go, you know, that's a great idea. What if I did that with my kids? Some mom on there has some idea of, man, we did this painting thing with the kids. You go, man, that's a ton of fun. Now, does my house. Is my house a multi million dollar house? No. Does my husband work two hours a week and is always there with the kids? No. Does that, you know, all of these things that they have in place? Don't idolize these people. These people aren't apostles, okay? They're not perfect. Make sure that you're not getting into the, the veneration of like, oh, I love this influence. Everything she does is perfect. You know what? They're flawed too. And sometimes the stuff that they push, you got to be very careful on. But I think it's okay to take inspiration from some of these things and go, you know what, man? That guy is built. Guys do this. I'll look at a guy who's just absolutely built and go, okay, how do you get there? What's he doing? It's. I think it's okay to look at that. It's not a comparison of I'll never be there, and boy, I wish I had what he had. We don't want to get into envy, but we do want to look at it and say, there are some people that are doing some really good stuff out there, and I would love to do that. That way, if you can use it as that and not get caught up into the idealism of it of like, I want everything to be absolutely perfect, that I'm going to have this minimalist house and I'm going to spend money. I don't have to try to be exactly like them. That's where it gets into the real problematic areas. But I think it's. There is a balance that can be had in finding appropriate inspiration from some of these things online and using it. And that's why I'm not against. I want to say this, I'm not against these online trends. It may sound like we are. I don't think any of us are necessarily against the. Especially the manosphere and the trad wife. There's a lot of, as we said, a lot of good. Some of these I'm very against, as we'll get to, but I'm not against online trends per se. It is how we take them as individuals and how far we run with them. And sometimes people can really burn out because, man, my life just doesn't look like that. It's taken as inspiration to say, man, I'd love my life to look like. That's fantastic. What can I do to get there and take it more from a what can I control? Rather than all control has been taken from me? Jack.
[00:32:43] Speaker A: Yeah, the envy and lack of contentment thing can really set in really quick too.
Of, boy, that's. That's how it needs to be. And you might start looking at your spouse like, well, they're not helping me achieve this dream life I have in my head. Like, that's.
You're not there either. Okay. Like, you're not the person on that Instagram reel or whatever the case may be. And so you really got to check that. Of, as you're saying, the inspiration and there's also a lot of the spit out the bones. We talk about that with, like, literature of people whose beliefs we don't really align with, but they might have something good to say here or there. Man, almost everybody has something good to say at some point. Like, you can. If you isolated every sentence a person ever spoke. Almost everyone who's ever lived has had some useful truth that they said. That does not mean you. You agree with everything they say or that you're trying to become them or anything like that. And so you got to look at that and be like, well, what are the bones that I need to spit out here? What are the things I need to reject, you know, and if you look at somebody and it's like 90% bones and 10% meat, that is. That's not worth it. Like, you get rid of that. But you look at one where it's like, all right, maybe the bones to this is they've got a life that I just can't have. Like, they're in a different place than me, where they're in a different tax bracket than me, they're in a different. Whatever it may be, that's okay. But, you know, figure out, as you're saying, the inspiration. What can I take from this? And what do I need to just throw away and not dwell on.
[00:34:01] Speaker C: I see a parallel here in living the Christian life and trying to be more like Christ. Is it ideal, is it idealistic to say, you know, well, I need to be like Christ? Well, you're never going to be like Christ. Well, so does that mean you're not going to try? Does that mean you're just going to kind of fall back as well? You know, it's too idealistic for me to try to be like Christ. So I guess. I know. Of course not. We are, we're inspired by that. We, we pursue the idealism. I can pursue the idealistic, you know, being like Christ because, yeah, I know I'm never going to be perfect. Like, I'm never going to be sinless. But that doesn't mean that if I spend every day trying to be more like Christ and I look back in five years, am I closer to the ideal than I was before? Well, probably. And then similarly, again, it might be a strange parallel, but similarly, if you maybe from the man's perspective, look at some of these manosphere things, and you say, well, I'm going to spend the next five years doing some of these things, going to the gym, eating well, whatever, in five years, as you look back, are you going to be identical to some of these idealistic, you know, things? Of course not. But you're going to be better than you were five years ago. You're going to have improved. You're going to have. Have grown in these areas. And so that's the parallel that I see of, like, we shouldn't be scared away from the idealism of trying to be like Christ because, well, he's just perfect. And we're never going to attain that. Instead, that is what we should be striving for because growth is going to come with it along the way.
[00:35:18] Speaker A: There's also that thing about don't compare your everyday to somebody else's highlight reel or the thing about the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. And you look over and like, man, it's. It's not. Mine is. I'm watering mine to death. It's still not as green as the other guys. You step over there, oh, his is fake. You know, for the guy, it might be he's on steroids. For the, as you say, the woman who just has the easy, laid back life of she wakes up and gets the eggs from the chickens and makes the bread with her kid and all that. And the production crew of six people is following her around like.
[00:35:46] Speaker B: And the nanny takes care of the kid 24 7.
[00:35:48] Speaker A: Yeah, right. So why are you comparing yourself to that person like that? You have to have the discernment of that of keep it simple, keep your expectations manageable in your. Yeah. And this is. There's always that balance. I know you guys talk about this on gym as well. Contentment and complacency. Contentment is a good thing. Complacency is a bad thing. And you have to be very careful where the overlap is of being happy with my life means. It does not mean I just quit trying. Like, this is. I'm going to park right here and never grow anymore. But the, the other side of it is you're always chasing something. You're not content with what you have. You're not okay if you don't get that life that they have. And so you're trying to grow inside of being thankful and happy with the life you have and what God's given you and all that. It's a delicate balance. And that this Internet thing complicates it.
[00:36:34] Speaker B: It does. And let me say this. I'm going to speak to the husbands here for a second. I know we have a lot of wives to listen to us, so get your husbands. Listen to this part.
The comparison game is very real for everybody. But let's be honest, primarily for women, especially for the stay at home moms that listen to us. I know my wife falls into this. It can be a real challenge where you're seeing these things and to compare yourself to the people online and go, man, I look nothing like that. My wife gets into Waldorf circles. It's perfect. And it's like you have to remember they have one kid and they're absolutely loaded and they live in the perfect, you know, with perfect everything. And the guy is never. Or the guy is always home. And like, to your point, Jack, of what you're saying, but husbands, you have to Know what your wife is consuming, and you have to be able to walk her back a little bit and say, hey, things are really good. Let's make sure that we're not getting too much into the comparison game here. And yeah, we got to guard ourselves against that as well. But that is a woman issue where. And I could point to scripture for this too, and take it first, Timothy, and things like that to say, the busybodies and the gossips and look what they have, man. Social media, if you're not careful, especially these trends, can give way to that. I just think it's imperative for husbands to actually engage with their. With. With what their wives are looking at online, where they're getting this stuff from. Because I know guys, their wives end up shaving half their head and, you know, turning. Turning lesbian and things. Like, they go, man, how do they get there? Because of what they were consuming online, because of the people that they were surrounding themselves with every single day and having in their ear through these Facebook groups and Reddit groups and things like that. You have to be aware of where your wife is going online, and she needs to know where you're going online as well. Obviously to the porn side of things and things like that. But that's very important. But the point that comes out of this, I think, is when, like, I think my comparison grows the most. When I'm most insecure in my identity, specifically when it's about identity in Christ. And this gets into, like, the healthy living and such. We're big on healthy living. I think that can be an identity. I think. I mean, I'm looking all these. I think. And this has been one of mine before the glorification of travel, you see a lot of that. And that was my identity for a while. I was a travel guy.
I realized that my identity has shifted over the years, and if I'm not careful, it might still shift. If I don't stay grounded in Christ, stay grounded in my family, stay grounded to things that I know. Doesn't mean that I'm never growing, but I can find an identity in one of these online trends and let that be the one thing that is. I'm that guy. I'm that guy. And again, I look at some of these on here, where it's like, yeah, I've been that.
And I think that's a. Something we have to guard against as individuals. This is not just a woman problem, but guys and girls as well. What is your identity if you can't actively say, hey, these are what make me me this is my identity. You may find yourself gravitating toward whatever online trend there's like, man, I'm all in on that. And then you end up burning out. I think it's okay to have some of these. The manosphere. I want to make that a part of my identity, but that's not my entire identity. Healthy living. I want to make that a part of my identity. That's not my entire identity, though. A big one. You see that we have on here is that diagnosis these or diagnoses, I should say, because a lot of people have the double, triple, whatever. I think we look at that as a badge of honor to say, oh, I got adhd, or I think I'm on the spectrum for autism, or I got OCD or whatever it may be. That may be true. That's true. You know, I'm not denying that these things take place, but a lot of times the way it comes across to me is people looking for an identity. And when you look at all of these things, like, that's really what it is. They want to know, who am I? And in the absence of a strong family that backs them and in the absence of a church family that helps them understand who they are, they're looking for something to say, who am I? Oh, I'm the trad wife, or I'm the homesteader, or I'm the ADHD guy, or I'm the autistic guy, or I'm the, you know, the guy who hates kids or whatever. It is like everybody's looking for an identity. As Christians, we have to recognize our identity has multiple facets. Christ has to be at the core. And I think that's why I say this is such a big problem in all of these is Christ is missing. We're trying to find an identity in something that literally is just going to blow away with the wind the moment that things start to change.
[00:40:40] Speaker A: Hey, guys, Jack Wilkie here. And I wanted to tell you about the Focus Press holiday sales going on December 3rd through mid January. We've got discounts on all kinds of books and DVDs, including devotionals our teen devos, or will Hareb's Family Worship Guide for Family Devotional Times. We also have books and DVDs on the fundamentals of the faith, like Dr. Brad Harab and Will Hareb's Starting Line, or my book, Sunday School Catch Up. And of course, there's deeper studies, such as Dr. Brad Harrop's convicted A Scientist Examines the Evidence for Christianity or my book, Church God's Design for so much more. Get discounts on these and all of our other content aimed at shoring up your walk, your home and your church as we aim to help you stand strong in today's world. Check it
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[00:41:28] Speaker B: That makes the other.
[00:41:29] Speaker A: Yeah, the other thing about that identity piece is it can become an idol that limits your growth. Like, you're stuck in that. And it's really funny seeing, like, the gurus that we've talked about, the people that are just the experts, the influencers, the whatever you want to call them, and they basically have to choose between accepting new knowledge, learning and growing, or keeping their audience. Like, I've seen, like, the keto carnivore thing was really big for a few years and it's still going, but a lot of those people have gone, yeah, I kind of burnt out on this. And you do need some carbs here and there. You need some of these things. And their comments section is like, you basically, you just turned Judas on me. Like, you what, you can't do that. You.
[00:42:08] Speaker B: I've.
[00:42:08] Speaker A: I've followed you for years and you. I haven't eaten a carb in six years. And like, that kind of thing, or I've seen the same thing, you know, former libertarian. There's a lot of guys that have come out of that. And again, guys that literally kind of had their livelihood from being an influencer in that sphere woke up one day and was like, you know what? I don't think I believe this anymore. And just overnight, like, essentially lost their job. And all the followers are so into that ideology that I can't grow and change because I'm this guy, I'm this thing. And I think that's a dangerous thing when, again, these are not Bible verses that you're switching on. This is trying to piece together natural revelation of this is good, and what is the best way to do this? And if you're so stuck in one thing that your identity is, I'm this guy, I'm carnivore guy. I'm, you know, this libertarian guy. I'm whatever one of these that you are. And then you wake up one day and go, oh, maybe that was wrong. Are you able to outgrow that? Or are you still stuck in that? And so it, it is a dangerous thing when you wrap your identity up in a person, in an idea, and especially not an idea of I'm a Christian, but the idea of one very niche, specific corner of the Internet.
[00:43:19] Speaker B: I think that's such a good point because it's an echo chamber. Right. We find four or five influencers that really back what we think we are.
And maybe that's a great thing. Maybe it's great and maybe it's not. Or if they start to drift a little bit, we might drift with them. And I've seen this happen before where maybe somebody's a trad wife and they're following trad wife. And then as a matter of fact, Alyssa had one and she was following. And this woman starts coming out with more and more kind of feminist leaning stuff against her husband. And I guess they're going through a tough time and she's like, well, this is wrong. And my wife, at least, you know, I'm. I'm glad she knows that. And she's like, nope, I'm gonna unfollow her. Because that's not right. Because she started to have more and more of these posts. If you're not careful, you may go along with that. You may go, you know what? Yeah, my husband's not that either, so.
[00:44:03] Speaker C: Because she's already built your trust. Kind of. Because you're following along with it. Yeah.
[00:44:07] Speaker B: And your identity is in that. And your identity is caught up in this woman. And so things start to change. It's just a dangerous game, I guess. And in all of this, it's a slippery slope. So I wanted to get to some of these other ones. Guys, I just want your thoughts briefly. If there are any of these. I'm going to mention some of these. Where you think they come from, if you have a comment. Maybe where you think they come from or what we should do with them. We talked about men who go their own way.
I think that's a. It's the guys that eschew marriage, that don't want anything to do with square off women. And yeah, they swear off women to the other side of it. We now have the 4B movement, which is. The B is, I think, Korean. Correct. And this happened after Trump. I don't know how those two things are connected in Korea and Trump, but.
[00:44:48] Speaker A: It started over there and women over here adopted it for the. We're going to punish men for this election thing.
[00:44:53] Speaker B: No dating, no marriage, no kids, and no, I think sex.
I think those are the four. The B is basically a Korean word for no, but it's a 4B movement. This is huge. This is growing right now. So it's kind of the exact opposite of the men who go their own way. Like, we're not going to deal with anything with women. These are kind of Punishing the guys aren't going to do anything with guys. And I'm looking at it going, okay, no fornication and women that probably shouldn't be getting married and procreating.
[00:45:16] Speaker C: That's what I was going to say.
[00:45:18] Speaker B: Is it? Bummer.
[00:45:20] Speaker C: That's what I was going to say is it's quite funny in this, you know, a certain candidate ran their whole campaign on the idea of being able to women's reproductive rights, basically the ability to abort unborn children. And now that that candidate didn't win, it's like, well, I guess we're not going to get pregnant. Like, huh, maybe you should have that idea. Like, maybe you should have thought of that. So, yeah, no, that would be my only comment is I do think that first of all, I think it's that to me, out of all these is going to be the one that fades away the quickest. Like, I think that was just kind of an election outrage thing that people just got on and posted and it's just going to die away very quickly. But I did the, I did very much appreciate the irony in that of like, oh, so you're saying that you're not going to sleep around, you're not going to get pregnant out of wedlock.
[00:46:06] Speaker A: And how you have self control. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. If a woman only picked half of them, would it be to be or not to be?
[00:46:14] Speaker C: Give me a break. Oh man.
[00:46:16] Speaker A: That is the question. So that is like, okay, we gotta move on, Joe. Moving on.
[00:46:21] Speaker C: We gotta move on.
[00:46:22] Speaker B: Second one is Jack, I want your thoughts on this. We talked about this a little bit before, but the high church movement, we're seeing a lot of guys go toward orthodoxy, go toward Catholicism, go toward Anglicanism. What are your thoughts on the high church movements and where that comes from?
[00:46:34] Speaker A: I think it's the natural revelation thing again of you walk into a church of an effeminate guy on stage. This episode, Jack, just no, because nobody's gonna talk about. But yeah, it is. It's like somebody walks into this church and the smoke machines and all the goofy stuff that happens and the guy up there in shorts and flip flops and a T shirt preaching. And it's like, this doesn't feel right, like I'm coming before God like that they're trying to make it as comfortable as me sitting at home watching football on the couch. Or you know, with COVID that literally you could do, say, you know, sit home on the couch and do church. Like, I think natural revelation had people going, no, there's got to be something more than this. So they go all the way toward. We need ornate stuff, funny hats, gold chain smoke, you know, a different kind of smoke coming out of a sensor rather than smoke machines. The Book of Common Prayer, which I think, I mean feather in its cap is a nice thing the Anglicans came up with there of getting people in the Word and in prayer every day.
Like credit to him on that one. Even if I don't agree with the whole thing. So you can see the appeal to that of like, man, I need to take this seriously if I'm going to come before God, I need it to look like I'm taking it seriously. And most of the churches I go to don't want me to do that. They want to tell me, oh, don't do that. I mean we had our church clothes episode and things like that. Like, yeah, I think it was again natural revelation telling people, if you're going to come to God, do it the right way. And I don't agree with how they got there, but I. You understand it from that point of view.
[00:47:52] Speaker C: It's a good point.
[00:47:53] Speaker B: That's very interesting.
We talked about homesteading. I'm going to put three together after with the danks and the parenthood. Well, two I guess, but idolization of pets. We've talked a little bit about this one. Above children, there's three that kind of go together. There's the Dinks, which is the double income, no kids, the idolization of pets, putting them above that and then the ridicule and mockery of parenthood basically in marriage. Ryan Reynolds was an early adopter. This. He got big where he's just kind of putting his kids down a lot or how much he hates parenting or you know, how exhausted he is. And they make fun of their kids a lot. And we see this Instagram is bad on all these reels making fun of the kids or making fun of how difficult parenting is. And, and guys, I'm curious your thoughts on all three of those because really it seems like it's an attack on children, an attack on parents, an attack on. On the natural way of doing things. What are your thoughts or do you have any thoughts on Dink's idolization of pets and the mockery of parenthood?
[00:48:49] Speaker C: I think to me the most interesting one of those is the idolization of pets in the sense of. We've talked about a lot of this before and so maybe that's just. It's been quite a while since we've done a lot thing. But I do Think it's very interesting that in a, in a culture and in a world where kids are very much looked down on, very much viewed as kind of a hindrance, a burden, obviously, you know, like the point I just brought up a second ago about, you know, abortion and like, they're just not valued. What is being raised in value, what is being elevated in value? And as pets and kind of the couples that get married and they're, you know, dog mom and they've got two or three dogs and like all their. It's. To me, it amazes me that people cannot miss the sadness in the. When people post their Christmas photos or Thanksgiving photos and instead of them and their kid or their kids, like it has been and is supposed to be, it's them and their dog. Like, again, people just miss the. And I get to give the qualify. We're not talking about people who can't have children. We're talking about people who choose not to.
We got to give that every time because, you know, we want to be very sensitive to those who cannot because, you know, can't imagine that. But again, for the people who choose not to, who are actively choosing not to or actively choosing to be a dog mom and you know, their granddaughters and things like that, that to me is the most interesting side because it's like, it's almost like if you're not wanting to have responsibility with kids and so you're going to have a kind of a cheap form of responsibility, like a very low scale, kind of elementary level of responsibility, like, you know, I'm going to have a goldfish, you know, for. That's how they teach kids responsibility. Right. Like give them a goldfish, so they're going to take care of it. Similarly, like a young couple having a kid's a big responsibility. Like, ah, no thanks. Give me the, give me the easier version of responsibility. Give me a dog to take care of. So, yeah, I mean, nothing groundbreaking there, but I do think it's interesting how kids have been devalued and pets have been, you know, elevated.
[00:50:40] Speaker A: Awesome. You want. Happy to see you. Yeah, the cuddly say when you come home.
[00:50:43] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:50:44] Speaker A: It's not ever throwing a temper tantrum kind of thing. It might get into a little mischief here and there, but yeah, it's super easy. It strokes your own ego. Like it's, it makes you so. Yeah, it's. It's all of those things. The other thing is. So we just road tripped back and forth, Thanksgiving and all that. Nobody has a play place anymore. McDonald's doesn't. Chick fil A doesn't. I mean, like, burger does. Yours does. Okay, Amanda.
[00:51:07] Speaker B: Yeah, it does.
[00:51:08] Speaker A: It is crazy. I mean, like, you look everywhere you drive, you look, and they got rid of them. Most of the Chick Fil A's that you see get knocked down and rebuilt back up. That's one of the main things they change is they get rid of that for extra seating area or whatever it may be. And so you've got this society that's, like, pushing kids out. There's not kid spaces like there used to be. But you also notice you go into a lot of these restaurants and people bring their dogs in. I don't want your dog near my food. I don't want your dog in my Walmart. I don't want. And on my airplane, on anything. If you're blind, I'm giving you a pass. Other than that, get your dog out of here. And yet my kids are an inconvenience to a lot of places. And it's just weird, this flip that we have. And it's like, well, wow, no wonder we're not in a replacement birth rate. And we're going to die out as a nation. And most Western nations are.
[00:51:52] Speaker C: You know what's crazy about that, too? Just Jack, as I was thinking about you saying, I don't want my dog. I don't want your dog. You're my food. People would get so repulsed that you can't say that. I mean, like, people are so protective of their dogs. But you hear somebody say, I'm not really a kid person. I don't like kids. And, like, people don't bat an eye. It's like, oh, yeah, okay, that's. That's a perfectly normal opinion to have, is how people take that.
[00:52:10] Speaker A: They'll say, I don't trust a person who doesn't like dogs. Oh, I don't want kids. I like. Okay, right, Whatever.
[00:52:17] Speaker B: I know who to trust and who not to trust. Yeah, yeah. And the reason why I put this on here, just as an online trend, you have to be very careful that if you are inundated with this content, if you're on Instagram or your TikTok reels are nothing but making fun of kids. And then you're, you know, you're just trying to decide, do we have more than one kid? Do we have more than two kids? That will absolutely change it for you. If you're getting a steady stream, even if it's a subconscious thing, a steady stream, how much kids think and how life would be so Much better if it was just easy and you decided you were going to have kids, but now all of a sudden you were going to have four, but you might have one or two. Those things do influence us. There's a reason they're called influencers, because they do influence us towards certain things. They influence us to buy Amazon garbage we don't need. They influence us all these different ways. You have to be very careful what's on your timeline, what's what you're scrolling through all your reels as you go thousand a day. If you are getting inundated with these things about how much it sinks to be a parent or how difficult it is or how dumb your kids are or how much you can't wait to get them to go back to school, that's going to grate on you. I don't care who you are when you are in the with that, you have to be very careful. The last one I was going to.
[00:53:22] Speaker A: Point out, well, hold on. This goes back to my point earlier of like, this is pulling the mask off the fact that we are influenced and we are. I have so much teaching us who we are and how to think by these things. Thirty years ago, there was almost nobody going, you know what? I'd rather have dogs than kids. You know how many people do that now? And it's just because it became socially acceptable via the Internet. Like, if your point is. Exactly. Oh, yeah. I mean, all of these things are just Internet creations and so you're spot on with that of like, pay attention to what you're consuming. It will change your viewpoint.
[00:53:51] Speaker B: Yeah. Last one is, and I've already mentioned this, but I wanted to hit a specific point on this. The glorification of the travel or the wealthy lifestyle. Man, I love to travel. I think I've said that on the podcast before. I used to travel a lot and it was great. Now I have a wife and kids, I don't get to travel near as much. We still travel, go see family. And I probably, you know, I still am blessed with how much I get to travel, but it is a significant less rate than I used to. That's okay. That's a good thing because I have things to live for and, and the point I was going to make with this and then, fellas, we can move on. I don't know if you have anything else to add, but it's just the polarization you have to be careful for. You either have the homestead movement of don't ever go anywhere because you have a bazillion Chickens and cows and goats and everything else to watch out for. Or you have the travel lifestyle where you're home about two days every year and you're getting either one of those, both of those on on your Instagram reel, and it's like, well, which one do I do? Do I go toward the homesteading where it's all about the home, or do I go toward travel where it's not about the home at all?
It's okay to find balance. That's really the point that I wanted to drive home with this podcast more than anything is it's okay to find balance. It's okay to find inspiration from these things. It's okay to. To recognize, as Jack's talked about the natural revelation. I think those are all very valid points. We have to be careful that we are not finding our identity and also being so polarizing on this. Like, I have to have the homesteading lifestyle. Otherwise I'm just not, you know, my life isn't fulfilling or I have to travel 24 7.
It's okay to be right in the middle and to go, you know what? My life doesn't look like those things. I can be okay. I can serve Christ where I am. It's the same thing as, man, this guy goes and traveled to five different countries this year spreading the gospel. What am I even doing? Like, you're raising a happy, healthy Christian family at home where you're getting them to church every Sunday and making a huge difference. And no, you didn't go baptize 10,000 Africans, but you stayed home and you got your kids to go to church and now they know a lot more about the Bible than they did on January 1st. Good for you. Good for you. That's fantastic. You don't need to go look at all the David Platts and everybody else in the world that goes, man, what am I doing with my life? Like, you are right where you need to be. God's got you here for a reason. You don't need to go homestead and sell everything so you can go buy a bunch of chickens. Unless you want to, that's fine. But you don't need to do these things. You don't need to be traveling 247 to find fulfillment and happiness and joy and everything else.
It's important to find joy right where we are. Find joy in the little moments with our kids. Find joy. You know, I just paid $2 and 20 cents for gas here in Colorado. Couldn't believe it. It's a little moments. I. I looked at my sister in Laws in the car. And I was like, it's the little moments in life to make a difference. I just paid $2 and 20 cents for gas, which is significantly. It's like 60 cents cheaper than everywhere else. It's so stupid, but it's like, you know what? That's a little, little joyful moment. Like we were able to travel. We had a great Sunday. We had a great, great time as a family. We went out to eat, got cheap gas. It's the small things, man. I don't need to be. I can do that in Tennessee. At home, I can do that when I visit my in laws here. Life is really good where you make it. I don't want there to be that, man. I, you know, the polarizing. I gotta be one or the other. Stay in the middle. It's okay where you are. Continue to lead your family more toward Christ. Enjoy the little moments of the day and use inspiration here, there to make it a little bit better as you go. And that's the way I think social media, we ought to be looking at. Social media is a way to boost us up, way to give us some inspiration and just a way to connect with other people that genuinely care about us. Please don't get sucked into the reels and the comparison game and everything we've talked about, fellas. Anything else you'd add to that?
[00:57:11] Speaker A: Yeah, just. We have one other brief thing on it is I'm losing my train of thought, so. Well, I'm gonna move on from that because I'm trying to think of what my Think fast was too. I'm. Man, it's been a long week of travel and so. Travel there. There you go. My travel was to Oklahoma for Thanksgiving, so I'm gonna drop it right there. In fact, I'm just gonna cut this part because I had a good point and it was gonna be brief and I was gonna move on and that's it. So let me make a note to cut.
[00:57:37] Speaker B: You know what?
[00:57:38] Speaker C: You think fast.
[00:57:39] Speaker A: I had a couple options. Do you wanna talk about influencers you like and dislike? Do you wanna talk about what was my other option?
Yeah, let's go with that. Because I can't remember what my other one was. Right.
[00:57:58] Speaker C: Joe, you go first.
[00:58:00] Speaker A: All right.
[00:58:01] Speaker B: Wait. Oh, yeah.
[00:58:03] Speaker C: When he asks.
[00:58:04] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, I mean, great point. That'll take us. If there's nothing else. I think that wraps most what we had to cover for this episode. If there's an online trend you had a comment or question about something you have observed that maybe we missed. Put it in the comments, wherever you catch this, Facebook, YouTube especially focus plus, we'll check that out and try and get back to you on it, but with nothing else there. Let's talk about our Think Fast for this week, which is going to be related to the episode.
An influencer.
Again, I hate that term so much. Whether it's a podcaster, a blogger, a vlogger, whatever term you want to call it. Someone you like when you dislike. Like what which ones do you guys look towards or enjoy kind of their work.
[00:58:49] Speaker B: I gravitate toward Chris Williamson, Modern Wisdom. There are some content warnings there, here, there. Some of the episodes I just turn off, like that's too much. But he gets into some really interesting discussions. But it is more manosphere stuff. I use it as inspiration. So I'll listen to that.
Yeah, I got my audiobooks and such. I was trying to think I'll listen to a Rogan podcast. I'll listen to some sports podcasts here or there. I don't do a ton of listening, so it would be more on the book end of things. And that is a smattering of all sorts. So yeah, Chris Williamson is probably the one I go to gravitate toward the most. There's another one that I'm blanking on right now since I'm on the spot here, but if I think of it, I'll come back to it. Will, how about you?
[00:59:32] Speaker C: Yeah, it's funny, I'm very firmly in the Gen Z camp and I don't really. I'm not really big into the following. Listening to a lot of influencers. I'm if I'm listening to non spiritual, non kind of productive type podcasts and things, it's usually a sports podcast. And so there's, you know, not a lot of influencer going on there. I like. I don't know if this counts. I do like listening to some of Dave Ramsey stuff just because finances kind of always interested me and so I enjoy listening to him. What's the other guy's name? George Camel. Like some of his stuff and then as far as like political realm, that kind of thing. I like a lot of the Daily Wire type stuff, but I'm just not a regular enough listener to where I feel even comfortable shouting out some of. I mean, you know, Matt Walsh is fun to listen to. Ben Shapiro here and there. But like I'm not, you know, my brother Shout Out Reese. He's listening. He. He is a Shapiro follower.
[01:00:27] Speaker A: Daily, literally Daily Wire for Reese. Huh?
[01:00:29] Speaker C: Oh, yeah. Daily. Daily Wild Daily Shapiro for Reese but yeah, I mean, as far if it's not sports, I don't really have a. One guy that I do listen to. One guy that I don't. Joe, do you have another thought?
[01:00:39] Speaker B: I had two more. Yeah, two more that I remember. One is Andrew Huberman, Huberman Lab. He's got some very interesting stuff. So I listen to Huberman and get his emails and such. And then another one is Aaron Wren. I know Jack.
[01:00:51] Speaker C: Aaron. Yeah. Yeah, that's a good one.
[01:00:53] Speaker B: Yeah. And I follow him. We've actually discussed two of his things on the gym podcast. I get his emails and read through those. He's got some really good stuff. A couple others on Twitter that I probably won't. Won't mention. The other one that I read all the time is Jack Wilkie. I read his stuff quite a bit. Follow him.
[01:01:07] Speaker A: I appreciate it.
[01:01:08] Speaker B: Twitter. So yes, I, I actually consume yours.
[01:01:11] Speaker C: How could I forget as a fan.
[01:01:12] Speaker B: Not as, not as a brother. I legitimately do as a fan. Like, this is really good. And then I'll text you, man, that's really good.
[01:01:17] Speaker A: But I appreciate that. I didn't do it for a big head here or anything, but.
No, you said Ren. I really like his stuff. He's not a minister. He comes at it. I mean professionally. He's a consultant, which I think is really interesting is he's got that eye of like what the church does well, doesn't do well from a consultant's perspective. For Bible study, I really like Peter Lightheart and a very different look at the Bible and his old colleague James B. Jordan.
Yeah, I'm not going to get into. There's just so many different rabbit holes that I'm going to in their sports, politics. Everything else I mentioned, ones you don't like, I don't like Ben Shapiro, so sorry. Yeah, I know the voice, man. Just how do you listen to that non stop. Okay, folks, you literally can't turn them up faster because you can't understand them at one speed. So yeah, there's. There's just a lot of.
[01:02:10] Speaker B: Charlie Kirk is pretty good though. He's got some good stuff.
[01:02:12] Speaker A: Yeah, he can be decent.
[01:02:14] Speaker C: You know who's turning into somebody that I really enjoy listening to is Vivek. When like those clips that Vivek Ramaswamy puts out that he's. I like that guy.
[01:02:21] Speaker A: He's a great podcast.
[01:02:22] Speaker B: Thoughts on Tucker. He's a good podcaster.
[01:02:24] Speaker C: Oh, I forgot about Tucker.
[01:02:25] Speaker A: I don't listen to his podcast, but he's.
[01:02:27] Speaker C: I don't either.
[01:02:28] Speaker A: Very interesting guy. And Everything. I, I mean, I. But it's a lot of these guys. It's two, three hour things. I'm like, man, there's just not enough.
[01:02:34] Speaker C: Time to consume all this stuff, man.
[01:02:36] Speaker A: Like, no, I tried to sit down.
[01:02:37] Speaker C: And listen to the Rogan Trump interview and I just didn't ever find the time to get through the whole thing.
[01:02:42] Speaker A: Oh, man.
[01:02:42] Speaker C: Three hours.
[01:02:43] Speaker B: First night, 3am, man.
[01:02:44] Speaker A: Yeah. You stayed up for that?
[01:02:46] Speaker B: Yeah, I did.
[01:02:47] Speaker A: That was pretty wild. Interesting.
[01:02:49] Speaker B: Shout out Russell Brand for my sister Loves.
He's got some interesting, interesting stuff.
[01:02:54] Speaker A: So anyway, well, we just put a lot of political cards on the table so you know where folks here stand.
As if they probably didn't already know, but that's okay. Uh, but yeah, I mean, if you've got ones you like, don't like, let us know on that one as well. And again, thanks to Joe for putting this one together. We've kind of, as he said, talked about it for a good long while of. We discussed these trends, we discussed the things we're seeing online, the influencers and things we come across. And I think it was good to kind of flesh out again, I think that's central point of what the church can learn from these and engage with these ideas rather than kind of going, no, no, no, that's, that's over there and we're over here. Like, that's, that's where the people are for a reason. So very good stuff. Thanks to Joe for putting it together. And as I mentioned at the start, this, if you're listening, Monday BF 2024 for Black Friday sales is your coupon
[email protected] and if you catch this after Monday, go anyway, because there's going to be a lot of sale prices, maybe not the 25% off everything, but there's plenty of stuff on sale, so be sure to check that out and we will talk to you guys on the next one. It.
