Speaker 1: Got Parker, my brother, with me today. Haven't you haven't
Speaker 1: been on the podcast in a while, It's been a
Speaker 1: long time. We are talking today continuing a kind of
Speaker 1: a trend we've done on this podcast where we answer
Speaker 1: your questions if you email podcast at grangersmith dot com.
Speaker 1: And the trend has been that I take kind of
Speaker 1: the most popular questions to me and bundle them and
Speaker 1: we discussed that, and one of the most popular questions
Speaker 1: I get is about masculinity in a way of saying,
Speaker 1: in other words, what is it? What does it mean
Speaker 1: to be a man? What is a man? Which is
Speaker 1: surprisingly in twenty twenty four a thing, and that changes,
Speaker 1: Believe it or not, it changes over millennia, over centuries,
Speaker 1: even over decades. That answer changes depending on your worldview.
Speaker 1: The most common understanding of what does it be what
Speaker 1: does it mean to be a man? Today? The most
Speaker 1: common kind of knee jerk reaction to that is strong
Speaker 1: burrely able to work with this, hands, doesn't submit to
Speaker 1: anyone or anything, uses brute force for protection if you
Speaker 1: if you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything,
Speaker 1: like that old Aaron tip and nineties country song. So
Speaker 1: that's kind of what we're going to dive in today.
Speaker 1: Ant Man has provided us a few videos, and so Parker,
Speaker 1: I've have like I've seen I kind of know the premise,
Speaker 1: but I have not seen these videos. So you and
Speaker 1: I are going to experience it for the first time.
Speaker 1: What does it mean to be a man?
Speaker 2: You know, I've described this in a variety of different
Speaker 2: ways every time I answered this question. I've written a
Speaker 2: whole essay on this thing, but I'll give it to
Speaker 2: you just off the top of my head right now, because,
Speaker 2: like I said, I think that you can talk about
Speaker 2: it in different ways, but I think primarily it means
Speaker 2: to be responsible for yourself, but not just yourself, but
Speaker 2: to be able to take care of others. Because it's
Speaker 2: the minimum bar of a man to not be a
Speaker 2: negative on society, right, But a man, a true man,
Speaker 2: needs to not be able to just take care of himself,
Speaker 2: but be able to take care of other people to
Speaker 2: be a net.
Speaker 1: So I guess we should ask like this, So far
Speaker 1: are we in agreeance with this guy? The minimum bar
Speaker 1: of being a man is don't be a menace to society,
Speaker 1: And what you're moving for is to be a protector
Speaker 1: within society.
Speaker 3: I guess let's.
Speaker 1: Get some more data because I'm kind of with you here.
Speaker 1: Let's continue to be a net positive, right.
Speaker 2: That's why I advocate for men paying for dates and
Speaker 2: taking care of women and doing those things, because.
Speaker 4: It was just strangely offensive to a certain population.
Speaker 2: I like, it amazes me that it's the same, you know,
Speaker 2: it just drives me nus because I have a podcast
Speaker 2: with my wife called Better Than Perfect and we talk
Speaker 2: about traditional relationships on there, and there would be so
Speaker 2: many angry guys commenting on it that are like, she
Speaker 2: should pay for her own stuff. I'm not going to
Speaker 2: pay for And I'm like, these are the exact same
Speaker 2: guys that are upset about feminism, And yeah, I'm like right,
Speaker 2: cause you can't have it both ways. Like if you
Speaker 2: want women to be feminine and you want to be mouse,
Speaker 2: you want to be the authority in your house and
Speaker 2: be the man, you got to pay for everything. That's
Speaker 2: that's how it is, Like you got to take care
Speaker 2: of everybody if you want that authority. But it's the
Speaker 2: same guys, and it just drives me nuts because.
Speaker 1: So this is the thing. It's like, you need to
Speaker 1: be strong and you need to be a protector, and
Speaker 1: you need to provide that's what it means to be
Speaker 1: a man. Where does that come from? What's the foundation
Speaker 1: of that? Is that stainable?
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's interesting because I thought that this was going
Speaker 3: to go. I thought that this initial video is going
Speaker 3: to go in a different direction of more of just
Speaker 3: the David Goggins route or a little bit more straightforward
Speaker 3: pushing through obstacles equals masculinity, And this is already immediately
Speaker 3: going to more of a selflessness defines masculinity, which is interesting.
Speaker 3: Like you said, as I wonder where those guys are
Speaker 3: inherently getting that. What in us tells us that the
Speaker 3: men should be selfless. I was reading article on the
Speaker 3: Titanic the other day and the women and children like,
Speaker 3: go first, that's inherent in us that the man should
Speaker 3: sacrifice himself so that the women and the children go like,
Speaker 3: why is that inherently in us? And you and I
Speaker 3: would say, well, that's biblical. That's the ultimate example of
Speaker 3: that was Christ laying his life down.
Speaker 1: Greater love hath no man than this. Yeah, it's like
Speaker 1: the captain goes down with the ship. That's the thing,
Speaker 1: and that kind of translates into the family sphere, the
Speaker 1: career world, the team, laying your life down as the
Speaker 1: captain of the ship or the leader of the household,
Speaker 1: or the teammate who goes all out for his team,
Speaker 1: like you reward a player when you see that they
Speaker 1: have blood on their pants and mud and you go, man,
Speaker 1: what do you say? You say, he gave it all
Speaker 1: for his team. So, like you said, no matter our worldview,
Speaker 1: that's especially right now in twenty twenty four, everyone is
Speaker 1: agreen that part of masculinity means giving yourself up for
Speaker 1: the greater people or group or family or team, and
Speaker 1: that is an echo in Christian what we look toward
Speaker 1: in Jesus as he gave his life up for us,
Speaker 1: us meaning the people that believe that he did that,
Speaker 1: and God enters his own creation and suffers in it.
Speaker 1: So suffering is a part of this as well. And
Speaker 1: I agree with you. I didn't think this is where
Speaker 1: this is going. This is what's beautiful about ant Man
Speaker 1: finding these videos because it's like, hey, we're going to
Speaker 1: We're gonna do a podcast answering a question about masculinity
Speaker 1: which gets asked all the time, and ant Man's like,
Speaker 1: here's how you're going to do it, so we're reacting
Speaker 1: to both of us might be a little caught off guard,
Speaker 1: and it I think it's good perspective. Let's see if
Speaker 1: this video has anything else.
Speaker 4: To say and all, because what happens is they're so confused.
Speaker 4: They were taught they're not supposed to have the authority.
Speaker 4: They want that authority, but somehow they feel guilty about
Speaker 4: that authority, and then they feel conflicted because they're doing
Speaker 4: these particular things.
Speaker 1: That's interesting.
Speaker 4: I mean, that whole idea of accepting responsibility, I think
Speaker 4: is a huge one.
Speaker 1: So I don't mind telling you that.
Speaker 4: But I my formation in this comes from my Catholic worldview.
Speaker 4: And by the way, I always spind it funny when
Speaker 4: people are on shows and they say, hey, you've been successful, John,
Speaker 4: tell us what the key to your success is, and
Speaker 4: they are talking about a lot of different things, and
Speaker 4: then one of them happens to be and oh, by
Speaker 4: the way, my faith, and the person's like, I don't
Speaker 4: want the actual answer, I want the fake one that's
Speaker 4: going to be placating my audience. So like, for me,
Speaker 4: if you said what drives me is my atheism, and
Speaker 4: I doubt that you're an atheist, I don't know, that's
Speaker 4: not my point. Or if you said it's that I'm
Speaker 4: a Stoic or I am a Catholic or a Buddhist, I.
Speaker 1: Would be interested in that answer, because that's your answer.
Speaker 4: So that's why I'm telling you what mine is, because
Speaker 4: otherwise people try to guess and it makes it a
Speaker 4: little easier. So my worldview on this is that really
Speaker 4: what it takes to be a man are these things
Speaker 4: that you said, by the way, is super important, but
Speaker 4: also the ability to sacrifice for a woman exactly, and
Speaker 4: if you're doing that sacrifice, I think it comes in
Speaker 4: a whole way, which brings back together that earlier conversation. Truly,
Speaker 4: a man is a guy who's I'm attracted to this woman,
Speaker 4: and I do want something naturally from a physical perspective.
Speaker 4: But even though I want that, I see you as
Speaker 4: a whole person, not an object, but as a subject.
Speaker 4: Therefore you want something too, which is a commitment, and
Speaker 4: ultimately both want that because also women do want sex.
Speaker 4: Men want sex. Men want to commitment. Women want to
Speaker 4: commit but it comes maybe a different order for a guy.
Speaker 4: So the guy has to work against his natural self
Speaker 4: to say, because I respect you, I'm willing to suffer
Speaker 4: for you in the beginning of the relationship may not
Speaker 4: work out, but in the beginning of the relationship, I'm
Speaker 4: going to resist a desire that I have and then
Speaker 4: ultimately for me, I believe that commitment comes after marriage.
Speaker 1: But I also realize help so very loose on all
Speaker 1: this right, Like he's he's just super loose. He's this guy.
Speaker 1: I don't know this guy. But what we see a
Speaker 1: lot in the podcast world is, look, this is your truth.
Speaker 1: This is my truth. That's fine, that's great. I respect
Speaker 1: your truth. Here's my truth. And I don't know if
Speaker 1: he really believes that. But in the podcast world, you
Speaker 1: want to say it because you don't want to offend anybody.
Speaker 1: But in reality, he's pulling from a he's pulling from
Speaker 1: a worldview that sounds a lot like, Jesus, what were you.
Speaker 1: I think what we're gonna get on this next one
Speaker 1: is a little more what you expected. But what were
Speaker 1: you thinking with the whole David Goggins thing, because that
Speaker 1: was a phenomenon that you and I both kind of
Speaker 1: experienced in twenty seventeen ish.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that our past generation's idea of manhood was,
Speaker 3: you know, John Wayne type character, someone who who was
Speaker 3: like stereotypically masculine in that he could, he could fight,
Speaker 3: he could shoot, he could live off the land, he
Speaker 3: could use his hands, and he stood up for what
Speaker 3: he believed in. And then we've transitioned as a society
Speaker 3: from that being the ideal, you know, ideal masculinity to
Speaker 3: a more passive masculinity that almost embraces feminism, that takes
Speaker 3: a back seat in many ways, that doesn't stand up
Speaker 3: for anything, that is just more passive.
Speaker 1: And so we have.
Speaker 3: These these these leaders come up, like the Joe Rogan's,
Speaker 3: the Jordan Peterson's, and then the David Goggins is a
Speaker 3: little bit more like brute, just vulgar to the extreme
Speaker 3: version of that that people have kind of clung onto
Speaker 3: as millions and millions of young men are lost and
Speaker 3: searching for meaning and trying to figure out who they
Speaker 3: are and they and then Jordan Peterson comes along and
Speaker 3: is extremely intelligent and says, I know exactly who you are,
Speaker 3: and I know exactly what your purpose is for life.
Speaker 1: And he can.
Speaker 3: Articulate things so well and speak at the speed that
Speaker 3: he thinks. And I remember being twenty four years old
Speaker 3: and borderline agnostic of well, who knows if the Christian
Speaker 3: God is the only god?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 3: If I was born in India, maybe i'd believe this.
Speaker 3: If I was born in China, maybe I'd believe this.
Speaker 3: What is my purpose? And my dad died when I
Speaker 3: was twenty and I didn't have a lot of male
Speaker 3: role models in my life, and I clung on to
Speaker 3: Jordan Peterson. And Jordan Peterson has some I don't want
Speaker 3: to go too long on a tangent on this. He
Speaker 3: has some incredible, incredible things that are extremely helpful.
Speaker 1: I'm not dogging on them. I still listen to a
Speaker 1: lot of things he says.
Speaker 3: But ultimately, guys like Jordan Peterson will say, like I said,
Speaker 3: I know who you are, I know what your purpose is.
Speaker 3: I know what your problem is, and it's that you're
Speaker 3: not bearing enough responsibility in your life. And so Jordan
Speaker 3: Peterson would come and he'd quote Luke nine carry your
Speaker 3: cross daily and he'd say, I know what this means
Speaker 3: for you, young men. Stand up, make up your bed, clean
Speaker 3: up your room. Luke nine, Carry your Cross means you
Speaker 3: need to bear ultimate responsibility in your life. Take on responsibility,
Speaker 3: get a job, be responsible, have a family, provide for them, Carrie,
Speaker 3: and he even he even used God's name in vane when
Speaker 3: he was describing me. He said carry your cross daily
Speaker 3: and I was like, yeah, that that's my purpose is
Speaker 3: to bear ultimate responsibility. So and then you have the
Speaker 3: David Goggins that are a much more just vulgar, vulgar
Speaker 3: version of that of just destroy your enemies, stop being mediocre,
Speaker 3: which has good principles for the passivity that's wrong with
Speaker 3: with masculinity today, but ultimately it's neither of those options
Speaker 3: are are related in Christ.
Speaker 1: So what that what that's doing, and what that video
Speaker 1: that we just watched is doing, and what Goggins is doing,
Speaker 1: and what Peterson's doing is there they're matching up. It's
Speaker 1: kind of like we saw the total eclipse yesterday. They're
Speaker 1: they're matching up these what people want to hear with
Speaker 1: what the culture is doing right now, and when it's
Speaker 1: a perfect match, everything works well. Tim Keller talks about
Speaker 1: this how you can't you can't match masculinity with what
Speaker 1: the culture is doing because that's not a timeline way
Speaker 1: to do it. For instance, Tim Keller, I'm gonna try
Speaker 1: my best to remember I remember hearing this a long
Speaker 1: time ago, he describes it like a that a medieval
Speaker 1: warrior is. He's he's strong in battle, and he also
Speaker 1: has a sexual tendency to love men. So that sexual
Speaker 1: tendency to love men is looked down upon in the
Speaker 1: Middle Ages, but to be a warrior looked has looked
Speaker 1: well upon. So he's gonna highlight that and suppress the other.
Speaker 1: Highlight the warrior. Do you remember Tim Keller saying this,
Speaker 1: I don't remember what book it was. Highlight the warrior,
Speaker 1: suppress the sexual urge. In twenty twenty four, you have
Speaker 1: a man that like that loves other men, and he
Speaker 1: is also aggressive, like a warrior. So in twenty twenty four,
Speaker 1: he's gonna suppress the aggression and he's gonna highlight the
Speaker 1: sexual urge. And so both of these men are exactly
Speaker 1: the same, the medieval warrior and the man in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty four. They're the same, with two different traits about
Speaker 1: them that one they will highlight and one they will suppress.
Speaker 1: All because culture is agreeing with one in one era
Speaker 1: and culture is agreeing with the other in the other era.
Speaker 1: And so it's the same man. And so that that
Speaker 1: is building a worldview of masculinity on culture and agreeing
Speaker 1: with culture. Right, let's let's look at this video.
Speaker 5: I believe that masculinity essentially died in the West and
Speaker 5: women became masculine to try to step into that role.
Speaker 5: I think that, you know, forty fifty sixty years ago,
Speaker 5: women became the guardians of masculinity to create order and
Speaker 5: structure when men died or checked out largely. Then we
Speaker 5: had a written emergence or a rising, a rebirth of masculine,
Speaker 5: but a child version. I think it was shepherded by
Speaker 5: women in the seventies and eighties, maybe the nineties. Child
Speaker 5: masculinity of okay, mom, i'll be good, i'll be nice,
Speaker 5: i'll be happy, I'll do whatever you tell me too.
Speaker 5: I think that rose up and we had a lot
Speaker 5: of happy wife, happy life became the message during that time.
Speaker 5: I think that now we're in the middle, or we're
Speaker 5: maybe at the tail end of what I would call
Speaker 5: juvenile masculinity. The reborn masculinity has been going through its
Speaker 5: turbulent teenage years with look at me, I can bang
Speaker 5: a pile of supermodels every night. How many bugattis do
Speaker 5: you have? I'm buff, I'm tough, nobody tells me what
Speaker 5: to do. We're regaining personal sovereignty, which is the first
Speaker 5: real step of masculinity.
Speaker 1: Okay, so there's two there's two words just right off
Speaker 1: the bat that is what a that's a sixty second clip.
Speaker 1: Two words that he says, one reborn and two sovereignty,
Speaker 1: two very biblical words. And this is another video that's
Speaker 1: kind of relating to using women and the rise of
Speaker 1: the power of women, as if that's hurting masculinity in
Speaker 1: a way. But that's that's their definition of it, that's
Speaker 1: getting hurt. And he says, you need to be reborn basically,
Speaker 1: and you need to gain sovereignty. So both of those
Speaker 1: used in opposite ways, really opposite ways of what the
Speaker 1: Bible says and so gaining Parker, I want to ask
Speaker 1: you what does it mean to gain personal sovereignty? In fact,
Speaker 1: what is the danger of striving with a purpose to
Speaker 1: gain personal sovereignty?
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's interesting that what he was saying about like
Speaker 3: a juvenile masculinity of to a certain extent, you're going
Speaker 3: from just like pure passivity to being reborn. Like we're
Speaker 3: all religious, right, whether we admit it or not. Being
Speaker 3: reborn we're all we're all serving one thing or another,
Speaker 3: and so I don't know, that's just so interesting to
Speaker 3: think that juvenile masculinity of your just going purely for
Speaker 3: like these fleshly desires of like we're seeing a generation
Speaker 3: of men that are just going for women, money and power, right,
Speaker 3: And he's basically saying that's taking some form of personal sovereignty,
Speaker 3: or I think what he means by that is personal
Speaker 3: responsibility of like the Jocko Willink Navy seal idea that
Speaker 3: you're the only thing that you can control is your
Speaker 3: reaction to certain situations and basically everything, taking ultimate responsibility
Speaker 3: basically for everything that happens in your life. And so
Speaker 3: all that to say, I think that personal responsibility can
Speaker 3: have good intentions initially of taking that responsibility, just like
Speaker 3: Jordan Peterson was talking about of it starts with the
Speaker 3: man taking responsibility and not being the victim like you
Speaker 3: were talking about before, where in twenty twenty four it's
Speaker 3: it's much more popular for the man to just play
Speaker 3: the victim, to just sit back. So that's good that
Speaker 3: you start taking personal responses ability. But then to answer
Speaker 3: your question, where that can become dangerous is if you say,
Speaker 3: I am in control of literally everything that happens to me,
Speaker 3: and so it's good to take personal responsibility for things
Speaker 3: and to claim things when they don't go your way.
Speaker 3: But then it gets dangerous when you start when you
Speaker 3: start thinking that you are ultimately what John Piper would
Speaker 3: call self determinant and.
Speaker 1: Thinking that.
Speaker 3: Whatever I choose.
Speaker 1: Is mine is ultimate.
Speaker 3: If that makes sense.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And what we're seeing with both of these videos
Speaker 1: is is two guys three actually claiming that this is
Speaker 1: the way to do it. We figured out the way
Speaker 1: to be a man. And what it's doing, back to
Speaker 1: the tim Keller thing, is it's aligning this with culture.
Speaker 1: So here's what culture says, and here's here's how we
Speaker 1: could make this work. Because then my question is to them,
Speaker 1: because of why, how do you know that? How do
Speaker 1: you know that this isn't just the Middle Ages and
Speaker 1: homosexual reality is bad and warrior good? Or how do
Speaker 1: you know it's not twenty twenty four homosexually homosexuality good,
Speaker 1: warrior bad? Suppress or raise up, Raise up or suppress?
Speaker 1: How do you know the difference? There needs to be
Speaker 1: an underlying truth, right that we could lean on, that
Speaker 1: we could grasp a hold of so that we're not
Speaker 1: deceived by the changing winds of culture or this swinging
Speaker 1: pendulum that happens through the decades where it's like the
Speaker 1: strong man in the nineteen forties and submissive wife, and
Speaker 1: then by Vietnam the wife raises up and the man
Speaker 1: becomes submissive, and then it keeps going, and then the
Speaker 1: woman gains power and then the man. Now the pendulum
Speaker 1: swings and now the man needs to be raising up
Speaker 1: in and the woman needs to be more. It's this
Speaker 1: mess that no one really understands why. But they're just
Speaker 1: swinging the pendulum, reacting to culture, overreacting way out into
Speaker 1: you know, left field, on reacting to the news they
Speaker 1: see living on CNN or Fox News, which whichever far
Speaker 1: left or far right they want, and they're reacting and
Speaker 1: going this is the answer. And so part of this
Speaker 1: podcast and what I've done, what I what I desire
Speaker 1: from this podcast is not to ever give people direct
Speaker 1: right answers, which we are here shortly we're going to
Speaker 1: answer this ourselves. But I want to help people be
Speaker 1: able to think through problems. And so instead of just
Speaker 1: giving people answer answer answer my girlfriend left me, what
Speaker 1: do I do you know I'm pregnant, What should I do? Whatever?
Speaker 1: These are all these questions I get. Instead of saying here,
Speaker 1: do this, do this, I would rather equip people to
Speaker 1: think with their own brain yes, and know where to
Speaker 1: build that thought those answers from what foundation to build
Speaker 1: them upon? And so I think that's part of the
Speaker 1: problem with these clips is these men they're not basing
Speaker 1: it on anything besides their own culture and their own lives.
Speaker 1: In twenty twenty four, right, this show is sponsored by Betterhelp.
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Speaker 1: message from me to whoever you want. Okay, so we've
Speaker 1: reacted to these videos, Park, and now we need to
Speaker 1: kind of get in ourselves dig in here and discuss
Speaker 1: what it means to be a man, because that's always
Speaker 1: the question that comes in, how to be a man,
Speaker 1: how to be the You know, I'm eighteen, I'm nineteen,
Speaker 1: my girlfriend's pregnant, I want to get married. I didn't
Speaker 1: have a good father growing up. How to be a man,
Speaker 1: and so there's entire books written on this. So we're
Speaker 1: not going to answer it in ten minutes, right, We're
Speaker 1: not going to give a full answer in ten minutes.
Speaker 1: But when we, like you and I both would do
Speaker 1: we base all of our answers on the Bible. We
Speaker 1: start with the Bible and we build up from there.
Speaker 1: That's the foundation. So, for instance, it in the Beatitudes,
Speaker 1: Jesus says a lot of amazing things that are very
Speaker 1: countercultural and whatever culture you're in, for instance, Matthew five five,
Speaker 1: blessed are the meek, for these inherit the earth. This,
Speaker 1: this idea of meekness is often thought of as weakness
Speaker 1: by people today, and so it's like, I don't want
Speaker 1: to be weak. I don't want to be inactive. I
Speaker 1: want to be active. I want to be I want
Speaker 1: to be a warrior. I want to I want to
Speaker 1: go to battle. But it's crazy because actually meekness is
Speaker 1: not an inactive word. It's very active. It is an
Speaker 1: active power under control, harnessing power under control, not being
Speaker 1: sovereign like that one guy said, but being under the
Speaker 1: control of the sovereign right Galatians five twenty two. Throw
Speaker 1: some of these out. But the fruit of the spirit
Speaker 1: is love, joy, peace, for Baran's kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness,
Speaker 1: and self control. Against such things is no law. So
Speaker 1: here it is again. You could you could say what
Speaker 1: does it mean to be a man? You could just
Speaker 1: fill in right here Galatians five twenty two. The fruit
Speaker 1: of that have someone who has the fruit of the spirit,
Speaker 1: which is love, joy, peace, for Barent's kind as, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness,
Speaker 1: and self control, which is gonna. I agree with with
Speaker 1: Jesus here in Matthew five to five Philippians two three
Speaker 1: and four. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather,
Speaker 1: in humility, value others above yourself, not looking to your
Speaker 1: own interest, but each of you to the interest of others,
Speaker 1: remembering Jeremna seventeen nine, I put this in here. The
Speaker 1: heart is deceitful above all things, and beyond cure. Who
Speaker 1: can understand it? Someone who Proverbs three five trust in
Speaker 1: the Lord with all their heart, and it says, and
Speaker 1: lean not on your own understanding in all your ways,
Speaker 1: submit to Him, and He will make your path right.
Speaker 1: One Peter five. Five. Once again I just grabbed random
Speaker 1: stuff here for conversation purpose. One Peter five to five.
Speaker 1: All of you clothe yourself with humility towards one another.
Speaker 1: God opposes the proud, but shows favor to the humble.
Speaker 1: Humble you humble yourselves therefore under God's mighty hand, that
Speaker 1: he may lift you up in due time. And here's
Speaker 1: the most interesting one for this concept. I've preached on
Speaker 1: this before. One Corinthians sixteen thirteen, and the ESV tells
Speaker 1: us to be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act
Speaker 1: like men, be strong. When he says Paul says act
Speaker 1: like men. That's the only time in the New Testament
Speaker 1: when it's translated that way, when he says it that way.
Speaker 1: In every other time, Old and New Testament, it is
Speaker 1: be courageous or have courage, So he act like men
Speaker 1: is being used just like you would say, be courageous.
Speaker 1: But every other time, especially when you dive into the
Speaker 1: Old Testament, and you see, like in the Book of Joshua,
Speaker 1: right right after Moses hands them hands them all authority
Speaker 1: to take the people into the Promised Land. And there's
Speaker 1: a lot of talk between Moses and then Joshua and
Speaker 1: to the people of be courageous, And it's always in
Speaker 1: terms of be obedient, be obedient to your God who
Speaker 1: has brought you here. That's how you be courageous, That's
Speaker 1: how you act like men. Paul saying, so, how do
Speaker 1: you take all this, Parker and then say, well, what
Speaker 1: does it mean to be a man? And then also
Speaker 1: kind of put that on top of these videos that
Speaker 1: we've seen of these men saying you need to lay
Speaker 1: your life down, you need to be the leader. How
Speaker 1: do you do that and be meek and have the
Speaker 1: fruits of the spirit with gentleness and self control, and
Speaker 1: stand firm in the faith and act like men, which
Speaker 1: means means obedience when the flash is not wanting you
Speaker 1: to be obedient. How do you go there?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'll I'll try to give a short answer and
Speaker 3: then try to relate it back to you because you're
Speaker 3: gonna know a lot more than me. But I was
Speaker 3: just thinking, as you were talking about, Like, if I'm
Speaker 3: listening to you say that stuff, I'm just like, what
Speaker 3: does that even look like? Practically, Like you're telling me
Speaker 3: that a man is his characteristics are love, joy, peace,
Speaker 3: and patience. Like that sounds like a beta male in
Speaker 3: khakis and a gigantic collared shirt and he's like one
Speaker 3: hundred and thirty pounds and he's just like hiding in
Speaker 3: the back.
Speaker 1: So that was my first thought.
Speaker 3: And then and then I was thinking a little bit
Speaker 3: more about you know, one of the things that you
Speaker 3: might be bringing up in a little bit is just
Speaker 3: how the Bible describes as a man as the head
Speaker 3: of the household in the marriage. The man is the head,
Speaker 3: he's the leader. He's the one who is who is
Speaker 3: called to be the leader of the house. And then
Speaker 3: practically what does that mean? Where do we get this
Speaker 3: this idea of you know, to protect and then to provide, Well,
Speaker 3: it's through how does he do that through? You know,
Speaker 3: it's sacrificial and so to protect? Where do we get
Speaker 3: all these these stereotypes of like you got to be
Speaker 3: like muscular and then you have to have a beard
Speaker 3: right to be a man. And well, I think that
Speaker 3: inherently it comes from a source of like protection, right,
Speaker 3: we we want to appear that we could protect our household.
Speaker 3: Or if you're a single guy, then you want a
Speaker 3: woman to know that you could protect her. So like
Speaker 3: inherently we want to be uh, you know, stronger and
Speaker 3: then to provide to the stereotype is that you should
Speaker 3: be able to you know, like work with your hands
Speaker 3: and be able to hunt and fish and like all
Speaker 3: those things inherently say that you know, I'm I'm able
Speaker 3: to provide. So if you're able to think just like
Speaker 3: one layer deeper in the onion of like our stereotypes
Speaker 3: of Okay, I need to be jack, have a beard, wear.
Speaker 1: A flannel shirt, have an axe in my hand, and
Speaker 1: be a lumberjack.
Speaker 3: B yeah, and be able to survive when when we
Speaker 3: have to go off grid, when when Biden gets re
Speaker 3: elected in the world shuts down now. But so just
Speaker 3: thinking one layer deep rev inherently you know, to protect,
Speaker 3: to provide, and how all that inherently is is built
Speaker 3: through what scripture teaches. And then so I'll just I'll
Speaker 3: relate it back to you of like you know, what
Speaker 3: does that practically look like for the guy sitting there
Speaker 3: listening there and he's like, cool, you just spewed a
Speaker 3: bunch of Bible verses at me. What am What am
Speaker 3: I practically supposed to do with that? And I'll kind
Speaker 3: of footnote that with like to either where you want
Speaker 3: to go with it. Of Jordan Peterson would answer, and
Speaker 3: I'm just using him as example because he's such a
Speaker 3: huge voice right now in masculinity in the world. And
Speaker 3: Joe Rogan would say the same thing. Of to answer
Speaker 3: your question, Granger, to be a man is to bear
Speaker 3: the heaviest load that I can in society, to find
Speaker 3: ultimate responsibility, bear that on my back, take it up
Speaker 3: the hill, and try to make the people around me better,
Speaker 3: and then that will justify, as he would say, my
Speaker 3: miserable existence on this floating rock. And that's the best
Speaker 3: that we got to justify our existence is just bear responsibility,
Speaker 3: which has great traits in it, but ultimately it's not
Speaker 3: it's not the Gospel, and it's not it's not necessarily
Speaker 3: the example of Christ.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so a lot of stuff, like you said earlier,
Speaker 1: I agree with Peterson in a lot of things I do.
Speaker 1: I mean, Twelve Rules for Life is just a fantastic book,
Speaker 1: and I'd recommend that to anybody. He actually reads the
Speaker 1: Sermon on the Mount in one of those chapters, like
Speaker 1: chapter six or something. It's been several years since I
Speaker 1: read it, but he reads, Blessed are the meek, for
Speaker 1: they shall inherit the earth, and he agrees with that,
Speaker 1: and I agree with Peterson. What I think the point
Speaker 1: I'm making is Peterson is today's voice, But who's the
Speaker 1: voice in twenty thirty four. Who's the voice in twenty
Speaker 1: forty four? And the reason we have to be careful
Speaker 1: with these the voices that rise and fall, is that
Speaker 1: where is Peterson getting his information from. He's just getting
Speaker 1: data and research from his short life. And he's a
Speaker 1: psychiatrist and he's done work on green couches for the
Speaker 1: last couple decades, and that's his data point that he's collected.
Speaker 1: But when that starts changing, and it will as the
Speaker 1: pendulum swings and as more conservative people get in office,
Speaker 1: and there's less need to rise up against the people
Speaker 1: they don't like than what is necessary to be a
Speaker 1: man if you're basing it on society and culture changes.
Speaker 1: Whole argument I made about the medieval man. So it's
Speaker 1: not that Peterson's wrong, it's not even that Joe Rogan
Speaker 1: is wrong. There's things that Joe Rogan and I are
Speaker 1: gonna line up perfectly if he was sitting in here
Speaker 1: right now. There are things that if I say, hey,
Speaker 1: how do I raise my family? Give me ten things
Speaker 1: to raise my family, Rogan's gonna give me five or
Speaker 1: six or seven things that I'm like, yeah, that's good.
Speaker 1: And then we're gonna disagree, like on two or three things.
Speaker 1: So it's not that Rogan is wrong, it's not that
Speaker 1: Peterson's wrong or that they're right, it's where are they
Speaker 1: where they basing their argument from? Which is what I
Speaker 1: want to help on this podcast is get people to
Speaker 1: think biblically, think on something that is timeless. Think about
Speaker 1: the creator of the universe provides guidelines for us, and
Speaker 1: he says, blessed or the meek, for they shall inherit
Speaker 1: the earth. Why because because you need that to happen. God,
Speaker 1: God doesn't need us for anything. He doesn't need us
Speaker 1: at all. That also doesn't mean he doesn't love us.
Speaker 1: Just because he doesn't need us doesn't mean he doesn't
Speaker 1: love us. Instead, he says, this is how you're wired,
Speaker 1: this is how it created you. You will do better
Speaker 1: you will have an abundant life here on earth if
Speaker 1: you do these things, if you serve others, if you
Speaker 1: treat others as more value as yourself, if you love
Speaker 1: your enemies, if you forgive, if you're meek instead of
Speaker 1: overbearing and overpower powering, if you're held within, hold your
Speaker 1: power within, have obedience to me, and hold yourself under
Speaker 1: self control, with gentleness and respect and kindness and goodness.
Speaker 1: You do these things. I don't need you to do them.
Speaker 1: I'm saying you do them because I created you in
Speaker 1: this way. Just like Ford Motor Company made a power
Speaker 1: stroke to run on diesel. You put diesel in here
Speaker 1: and you'll do well. You put gasoline in here, it's awful.
Speaker 1: And so these are our guideline. This is what we
Speaker 1: base masculinity on is through the Bible. In fact, there's
Speaker 1: not a chapter in the Bible that says, here's how
Speaker 1: to be a man. We read it as a whole
Speaker 1: as we learn who he is who created man. And notice,
Speaker 1: I'm not even going to the man and woman thing.
Speaker 1: I'm not even going to the household thing. Because I
Speaker 1: have men listening to this, I have women listening to this.
Speaker 1: I have boys listening to this that aren't married, I
Speaker 1: have a single people, so that that's not necessarily This
Speaker 1: isn't This isn't a discussion about how men are supposed
Speaker 1: to be within the relationship or within a family. This
Speaker 1: is men in general. You will do well if you
Speaker 1: are gentle and have self control, and have love and
Speaker 1: peace and forbearance and kindness, if you're watchful, if you
Speaker 1: stand firm in the faith, which is stand firm in
Speaker 1: your belief, which to stand firm in your trust, and
Speaker 1: to trust is to know if you know your God.
Speaker 1: He could say that, say it that way. If you
Speaker 1: know your God and you know him well, you will
Speaker 1: rest in him, and you'll you'll do well.
Speaker 3: Starts with with us as men bending the knee to
Speaker 3: our creator, which is not inherent in us. We're inherently prideful.
Speaker 3: And a lot of men are being told that Jesus
Speaker 3: is he made us because we're lonely, because he or
Speaker 3: he made us because he was lonely, right, and that
Speaker 3: he's just desperately trying to have a relationship with you.
Speaker 3: Please please please, I need you, I need you so much,
Speaker 3: I'm so lonely. Please and like an insecure boyfriend, right,
Speaker 3: like an insecure boyfriend exactly. And I remember you get
Speaker 3: in one of your talks on masculinity. You were talking
Speaker 3: about this this big God that you found when you
Speaker 3: when you read the scriptures, and he's more like a general.
Speaker 3: That is, you know, no one is too lost for Christ,
Speaker 3: like he is calling you.
Speaker 1: And he is.
Speaker 3: Tender and gentle and lowly, but he is also mighty.
Speaker 3: And when men come anywhere to looking at his face
Speaker 3: in the Bible, they fall to their knees and they
Speaker 3: can't even look at him because of the brightness and
Speaker 3: the purity of the light. God is a general and
Speaker 3: you're on the ground and he's saying, get up and
Speaker 3: follow me. Yeah, And so it's a it's a bigger
Speaker 3: call than than the the insecure boyfriend. And and that
Speaker 3: that walk of true masculinity begins when we bend the
Speaker 3: need to our creator and acknowledge, acknowledge our sin before
Speaker 3: him and our need of a savior, which just destroys
Speaker 3: everything in your in your prideful heart.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So so now let's get to the question that
Speaker 1: you said, well, how does that look practically? You talked
Speaker 1: about the guy and the khakis in the shirt and
Speaker 1: you know, big shirt and and and then we're comparing
Speaker 1: that to the you know what the world says. You
Speaker 1: got this guy, this lumberjack guy with with you know,
Speaker 1: harry chest and a flannel shirt, and he's holding an
Speaker 1: axe in his hand. So I love how you said.
Speaker 1: And that's how I responded when I first started understanding
Speaker 1: who God is, and that will be a journey as
Speaker 1: I continue. I don't. I still have so much to learn,
Speaker 1: and that will be a journey till the end of
Speaker 1: my life, learning more and more, pulling back those layers,
Speaker 1: like you said, of who he is. But as we
Speaker 1: begin to see him for who he is, we see
Speaker 1: a general. We see a football coach that goes, I
Speaker 1: know this season has been hard, but I have a
Speaker 1: game plan. Follow me, do this and you'll be well right.
Speaker 1: A general that goes, I know this battle has been tough,
Speaker 1: but I know I will win the war. Who's with me? Men,
Speaker 1: it's that guy, and I stand up and through that
Speaker 1: I go, I'm ready. Put me in, coach, put me
Speaker 1: on the first lines. General, when I'm on the front
Speaker 1: lines with you, because you're the general, the guy that's
Speaker 1: promising victory. When I'm on the front lines with that guy,
Speaker 1: I'm ready to go. And that is meekness. It's like
Speaker 1: I could go all over the place on this battlefield,
Speaker 1: I could do everything, but I want to follow this guy.
Speaker 1: So it's that submission and meekness and following the general
Speaker 1: and through that, what do I look like? What is
Speaker 1: that guy in the front lines who's following the general.
Speaker 1: Does he look weak? Does he look intimidated? Does he
Speaker 1: look like he's surrendering to the enemy. Not at all.
Speaker 1: He's the guy on the front lines. So when you
Speaker 1: have a man practically that has seventeen guns, you know,
Speaker 1: all hidden all around the house, he's he has, you know,
Speaker 1: an overt desire to be controlling and to be the
Speaker 1: man of the house and the protector, and if things
Speaker 1: fall apart, it's on him, and if they run out
Speaker 1: of money, it's on him. The guy that becomes overly
Speaker 1: obsessed by that is someone who is lacking love, joy,
Speaker 1: peace for Baron's kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control.
Speaker 1: The mirror image of that is the guy that goes
Speaker 1: I have some stuff. I responsibly protect my family, but
Speaker 1: I have a God that I trust, a general that
Speaker 1: I will go to war with, and I know he
Speaker 1: is in control, not me. That guy when you just
Speaker 1: look at you could look at that. It's almost the
Speaker 1: same guy on camera. It's the same guy, but there's
Speaker 1: one of them has a trust in something that is
Speaker 1: not his own and not a personal sovereignty like the
Speaker 1: other guy said in that video. He has a sovereignty
Speaker 1: and a great God who is the sovereign, not his
Speaker 1: personal sovereignty. Like I said, I will say one more time.
Speaker 1: I want to encourage people to think on their own,
Speaker 1: and I don't want people to email. It's been years
Speaker 1: of people emailing saying how do I do this specific
Speaker 1: thing in this specific scenario, specific piece of my life?
Speaker 1: And I would say to that, I would say, great,
Speaker 1: here's what I would do, But you need to eventually
Speaker 1: you need to know how I come up with what
Speaker 1: I would do? Like where am I getting that from?
Speaker 1: I don't just have a rolodex in my head of
Speaker 1: scenarios that play out. It always would just go back
Speaker 1: to what does God say? How does how has he
Speaker 1: revealed himself in his word? Not once again, not because
Speaker 1: he needs us or because he's lonely, but so that
Speaker 1: it will be well with us. He's giving He's given
Speaker 1: us an instruction manual on how He built us, and
Speaker 1: we do that and we follow that and ultimately these things,
Speaker 1: these fruits of the spirit start to manifest themselves. Love, joy,
Speaker 1: peace for parents, kindness, goodness, not because of anything we
Speaker 1: earn or do, but because of what Christ did for
Speaker 1: us at the Cross, becoming the substitute for us, because
Speaker 1: all of us have fallen short of the glory of God,
Speaker 1: all of us have fallen short of trying to earn
Speaker 1: our acceptance with God. And so knowing that God did
Speaker 1: that through Christ, you know that, you believe, that, you trust,
Speaker 1: that you submit to that. That's that's what it looks
Speaker 1: like to be a real man.
Speaker 3: Just quickly, as we close, I'll just share like my
Speaker 3: personal experience with with masculinity. Kind of good that goes
Speaker 3: along with with the way you just concluded, was is
Speaker 3: the idea of I recently finished a book called Rescuing Ambition,
Speaker 3: And so there's this idea and Christianity of a rescue
Speaker 3: or a redeeming, and to redeem is to set back
Speaker 3: to its original purpose. So if you're a guy and
Speaker 3: you're listening to this, like you know that you're built
Speaker 3: to work. Man, We're like, we're like work dogs, Like
Speaker 3: give us a sled, and like we're going to go
Speaker 3: pull and we're going to go, you know, pull something,
Speaker 3: and we're going to go carry a load. And but
Speaker 3: when we're born, the Bible says that we naturally turn
Speaker 3: away from God and we we worship and serve ourselves
Speaker 3: and create things. And so like I remember being a
Speaker 3: guy in my twenties is just like, you know, I
Speaker 3: had a great dad growing up, and so I feel
Speaker 3: like I had a pretty good head on my shoulders
Speaker 3: and so I wasn't like overcompensating like you see some
Speaker 3: of these guys that I think, anyway, I won't get
Speaker 3: down that road. But a lot of times when you
Speaker 3: hear these very vulgar guys talking about masculinity, it turns
Speaker 3: out they had like a dad that abused them or
Speaker 3: left them and abandoned them. And I think that a
Speaker 3: lot of it's rooted in that. But I remember being
Speaker 3: in my twenties and being like, I know that I
Speaker 3: had a dad who loved me, but I was still
Speaker 3: searching for purpose, I guess.
Speaker 1: And so.
Speaker 3: And so I remember hearing Jordan Peterson talk about the
Speaker 3: dominance hierarchy and how we're all in a All men
Speaker 3: are in a hierarchy. And so I thought, well, okay,
Speaker 3: if I'm going to play this game of life, I
Speaker 3: want to be at the top. I want to be
Speaker 3: in the top one percent. And Peterson talked about men
Speaker 3: are are valued based on their income and then their
Speaker 3: physical strength, because just like we're talking about protect and provide,
Speaker 3: So to provide is your income, and then to protect
Speaker 3: is like is your physical strength. So you know jiu jitsu, guns,
Speaker 3: that sort of thing. And so my ultimate goal is
Speaker 3: to make as much money as possible to reach the
Speaker 3: top of that dominant archy. Why so that I could
Speaker 3: get the glory and the honor and the power for myself.
Speaker 3: Because I only had one life. And so when I
Speaker 3: became a Christian and I considered the claims of Christ
Speaker 3: and I became convinced of the resurrection, God then redeems
Speaker 3: you or switches you back to your original purpose. It
Speaker 3: gives you a new heart that actually wants to give
Speaker 3: the glory and honor to God. And so it's not
Speaker 3: to say that you just lay down and you go
Speaker 3: to sleep and nothing matters anymore. But it's to say
Speaker 3: that you have a new purpose now and new desires
Speaker 3: for the glory of God rather than yourself. And I
Speaker 3: think that that framework is just important to put in place,
Speaker 3: because otherwise, if you're listening to this and you've just
Speaker 3: been given a to do list of stuff, then it
Speaker 3: could not be helpful. But I don't know, does that
Speaker 3: make sense?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, totally. It's interesting that you said that, because
Speaker 1: it made me think that it's unfortunate that the word
Speaker 1: meek rhymes with weak in the English, right, it's like
Speaker 1: an unfortunate problem that it meet rhymes with weak. But
Speaker 1: you know the original word for meek, what that came from.
Speaker 1: When Jesus said that that's not a throwaway word, when
Speaker 1: he said that it was known back then that the
Speaker 1: wild mustangs the ones that you wanted, the ones that
Speaker 1: the warriors wanted to go into battle with. Those weren't
Speaker 1: the workhorses. Those weren't the horses that pulled, you know,
Speaker 1: pulled around through the fields and made grain. Those those
Speaker 1: weren't the ones that you took back and forth to
Speaker 1: the well. Like the war horses were different. So the
Speaker 1: warrior men would go to the tops of the mountains,
Speaker 1: that's where they found them. They'd go past all the
Speaker 1: other wild mustangs and they'd go to the top where
Speaker 1: the powerful ones were, the wild ones, and they would
Speaker 1: find these these mustangs. Have you heard this, These these
Speaker 1: warrior men would find the wildest of the wild and
Speaker 1: you'd see him up there on the on the cliff,
Speaker 1: muscles just gleaming in the sunlight. You know, it's like,
Speaker 1: I want that horse. That's my battle horse. So they
Speaker 1: would they would battle for they would fight for a
Speaker 1: week to finally get this horse. They would track them
Speaker 1: from hilltop to hilltop, and they would finally wear the
Speaker 1: horse out where was just so exhausted and the men
Speaker 1: were able to overtake it with the horses they were with,
Speaker 1: and they would take this horse and break it. One
Speaker 1: warrior would break this horse. And then once he broke
Speaker 1: that wild horse, that horse trusted that master to the end.
Speaker 1: It trusted the master because that was the one that
Speaker 1: was finally able to harness all that power. And so
Speaker 1: he took that horse, and that horse would go into
Speaker 1: battle with him and run against the big line of
Speaker 1: barbarians and go right into that line and not stop
Speaker 1: until commanded to. Only a horse like that would run
Speaker 1: into the death going master, you tell me when to stop.
Speaker 1: If you don't tell me to stop, I move forward.
Speaker 1: That is what is considered a meek horse. So when
Speaker 1: Jesus says blessed are the meek, that's a whole new
Speaker 1: meaning for masculinity. Love you guys, see you next episode.
Speaker 1: Thanks for joining me on the Grangersmith Podcast. I appreciate
Speaker 1: all of you guys. You could help me out by
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Speaker 1: If you have a question for me that you would
Speaker 1: like me to answer, email Grangersmith Podcast at gmail dot com.
Speaker 1: Gig