Pastor Joel Webbin and Eric Kahn condemn "soft men" as agents of destruction, citing Matthew 11:7-12 to argue that effeminacy is a sin regardless of orientation. They critique egalitarian leaders like Russell Moore for mainstreaming anti-masculinity, linking it to the decline described in Romans 1 and the chaos undermining fatherhood. While noting the cost of faithfulness, such as losing 40 church members after preaching on 1 Timothy 2:9-15, they urge men to reject cultural idols, stand against feminism, and lead households in the fear of the Lord despite potential ridicule or cancellation. [Automatically generated summary]
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Effeminacy as a Sin00:14:46
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Hi, this is Pastor Joel Webbin with Right Response Ministries.
You're listening to another episode of Theology Applied.
In this episode, I was pleased to have as a special guest Eric Kahn from the Hard Man Podcast.
If you've ever listened to the Hard Man Podcast, you know that Eric Kahn is the man.
He does a great job.
He's kind of in the vein of Michael Foster with It's Good to Be a Man.
He's also teamed up with guys in Moscow like Doug Wilson, Jeff Durbin.
So he's right there in kind of the same tribe, same vein that our ministry, Right Response, would be a part of.
And what we talk about in this particular episode is the danger of soft men.
We talk about how soft men actually lead towards the death of more lives when soft men are in leadership than hard men.
We talk about what does it mean biblically to be a hard man.
We talk about men in soft clothing from Matthew chapter 11, verses 7 through 12.
Men in soft clothing.
Clothing.
You can find them in the palaces of kings.
But what did you go out into the wilderness to see?
You went to see an actual masculine man.
John the Baptist, he's eating locusts.
He's wearing camel skin.
You went to go and see a man.
So we talk about grit.
We talk about gravitas.
We talk about how effeminacy is a sin.
You may not be a homosexual.
You may not be a sodomite, which would be the biblical term.
But when you walk like a woman and you talk like a woman, but you're actually a man by God's design, that in itself is a sin, even if you never commit.
The sin, the action of homosexuality.
Effeminacy is a sin.
So, we talk about all these things in this episode of Theology Applied.
You're in for a treat.
Tune in now.
Applying God's Word to every aspect of life.
This is Theology Applied.
All right, welcome to another episode of Theology Applied.
I'm your host, Pastor Joel Webman with Right Response Ministries.
Today, I am privileged to have as a special guest Eric Kahn from Hard Man Podcast.
I want to say the Hard Man Podcast.
But I don't know if he's so presumptuous to say it's the top one or the only one.
It's just one of the hard man podcasts out there.
Is that correct?
No, it is the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.
It's that kind of the.
Yes, that's right here.
This is the hard man.
Michael Foster, eat your heart out.
This is the hard man podcast.
All right, well, tell us a little bit about your podcast, about your ministry.
Who is Eric Kahn?
Yeah, absolutely.
So I did go to the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.
I'm sorry.
I've since become a Presbyterian.
And somewhere along the way, started this podcast.
So the tagline is recovering biblical masculinity in a world of softness.
One of the things that happened when I left seminary, I went and pastored in a rural context.
And one of the things I noticed, right, all the people in my church, they're coal miners, they're oil field workers, really salt of the earth people, farmers, ranchers, et cetera.
And we saw a lot of, in the community, we saw a lot of seminary guys from multiple denominations come through town.
And the overwhelming thing that I saw was wow, there is just a juxtaposition between the salt of the earth people and then sort of these like white collar, effeminate guys who were coming out of the seminary.
So one day I write a blog post and I'm like, you know what?
I think that there's something about the seminary, in particularly Southern, it was very Ivy League.
You had a lot of soft guys coming out of that context.
I wasn't really thinking deeply on masculinity at the time.
I write this post, put it up on my blog at the time.
You know, it's like my mom, my grandma, and like a few other people are reading my blog back in the day.
Like, I was past the day when blogs were even cool, you know, and people were on to podcasts.
I wasn't doing this.
Yeah, you missed the podcast.
I did totally.
So, that post goes out, and within the first month of it coming out, I think it had 250,000 page views.
Wow.
And it was really at that point I started reaching out to people, getting to know some of the people who, you know, are in this space now pretty prominently Michael Foster, Toby Sumpter.
I heard him speak on a number of issues related to masculinity that really got me thinking along these lines.
And Really came to like a Matthew 11 understanding of there's actually something to be said in scripture about malachos, effeminacy.
And so I really just started with the book, unpacking it, looking at the text of scripture, looking at what the historical church has said about this, finding out, well, there's actually a lot.
And then comparing that really to the church today, I found very quickly that if you talked about malachos, you talked about effeminacy in the church, people, it was like hitting a beehive.
You know, people were like really irate about this issue.
Yeah, they were.
Let's talk about that for a second.
Malachos.
All right.
So you can go to bed like a woman, being a man, go to bed like a woman.
That would be a sodomite.
But you can go to bed like a man as a man, but get out of bed like a woman.
All right.
You walk like a woman.
You talk like a woman.
You behave like a woman, even though you're still sexually, in terms of who you're sleeping with at night, you sleep with a woman as a man.
So you're straight.
But effeminate, right?
Malikos.
I think a lot of people, as long as that guy doesn't go to bed with another man, he can be as effeminate as he wants to be.
So, talk about that a little bit.
Yeah, absolutely.
So, really, what I started to see is that most interpreters, modern interpreters, wanted to view this word, you know, 1 Corinthians chapter 6, they wanted to view this word as only the passive partner in a homosexual relationship.
Well, you start to look at the word, and that's, you know, especially Matthew 11, that's not how the word is being used.
In fact, as you're mentioning, it's really about mannerisms, how you carry yourself, how you speak.
One of the things that was interesting side by side as I was studying this, you know, studying the Greek, studying the terminology, history of interpretation, I was also looking at what the LGBT community was doing.
I happened to actually have a lot of friends who were, you know, acquaintances, works, and stuff like that, who we could have a conversation about these things at the time.
And they would say, you know, one guy I asked, he said, I have a lisp.
And I said, Is that natural?
And he said, No, it's to make other people, you know, feel uncomfortable.
And as I started researching it, even Like LGBT professors were like in the transgender movement, especially, they were teaching people how to act more gay, how to act the opposite sex.
So even they were picking up on this theme that, you know, malicose effeminacy is a whole list of mannerisms and behaviors.
And for a long time, I had taken this for granted, right?
I just thought that, you know, maybe they are just stereotypes.
That's really what we've been taught.
Things like men being naturally prone to like being protective and, Being providers.
Maybe these are just cultural stereotypes.
Again, you start looking at the text of scripture and it's very clear Genesis 2 15.
This is actually wrapped up in the DNA and the fabric and the nature of who men are.
And so it really is this mannerisms issue.
And what I noticed too, like in the church, was a lot of the people that get a pass were very much malicose, they were very much effeminate.
But if we've reduced our definition just to the sex act, then none of those categories are sinful.
In that view.
And that to me became problematic.
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
Yeah, it's grooming.
People forget that there's a progression to sin, you know, and there's progression for individuals, there's progression of sin for societies.
That's what Romans 1 is all about.
That, you know, people are born, you know, people are born spiritually blind.
Right.
But not entirely.
That's the very reason why they're judged by God, is you, O man, are without an excuse because God has clearly displayed these things, right?
His eternal nature, his divine power, eternal power and divine nature has been clearly put on display so that.
You are without an excuse.
So people are born, I would say they're blind to basically natural revelation is sufficient for one thing to condemn.
We need special revelation for salvation, but natural revelation is sufficient to condemn.
It shows us something.
So people aren't completely ignorant, but they progress in ignorance because of rebellion.
It's not that people are ignorant of God and therefore they choose to rebel unknowingly, but people are rebellious towards God.
And in their rebellion, they lie and suppress the truth and deeds of unrighteousness, which gives birth.
To a further and further ignorance.
And that ultimately displays itself.
It manifests in first impurity.
And I think of, in terms of societies, I think of America, impurity, okay, easy divorce, okay, pornography.
And then impurity moves to shameful acts, and you know, homosexuality.
And then it moves to a debased mind where people become inventors of evil.
Drag queen story hour.
That sounds like one that would have shocked even the Apostle Paul.
But the final step is surprisingly society's general.
Approval of those who practice those things.
And so that's where we are.
And sadly, the church is not an exception.
The church in general has approved of many of these things.
And there's some things that are just so biblically clear.
The church, at least some of the church that has remained at least somewhat faithful, said, okay, well, we can't approve of full blown homosexual sexuality.
But they've approved of as much as they can, like right up to the door.
So they approve of effeminacy.
They approve of effeminacy.
I think it's Michael Foster who says, if you want to know how to be a man, read a magazine written to women and just model that, right?
Be assertive, take dominion, all those kind of things.
So, the church, sadly, the church loves masculinity whenever it sees it in women, and the church hates masculinity whenever it sees it in men.
And we would say that that's not permissible.
We would say that that in itself, even if it never goes into full fruition, Homosexual shameful acts, we say even that in itself is inherently against the word of God, is sin.
Would you agree?
Yeah, absolutely.
And it's interesting, Joel, because I think what you've seen in the last couple of years really, a lot of people brought this up, but it's an apocalypse, it's an unveiling.
A lot of people's hands are being played.
And what you see in Christendom is really the mainstreaming of anti masculinity.
So I decided to torture myself.
I got a copy of Christian Cobes Dumez.
Book, Jesus and John Wayne.
I started reading this book, and it was like, it's just so obvious how hated biblical sexuality is.
But I think what's surprising is, you know, 10, 15 years ago, that wasn't quite in the mainstream.
But now, like when you listen to the rise and fall of Mars Hill Church, she's one of the prominent speakers in, I think, episode four, and then some of the ones following.
So I think it's the mainstreaming of that.
What's been really interesting, though, tied to the Ukraine situation, All the like egalitarian leftist feminist Christian people who work at Christianity today, you know, the Bethmore types and Russ Moore and all that sort of stuff.
It's fascinating because you have the Zelensky of Ukraine, and they're like praising him, like, what a man.
You know, he's acting courageously.
So it's funny because they know exactly what masculinity is.
That's right.
You know, vir, the Latin for virtue, courage, man.
Like, you can't say man without saying courage.
We know this, and they're actually not dumb enough to not know that.
But yeah, it's this just onslaught, this attack on masculinity.
Again, 10 years ago, I think it was more subtle.
Certainly, feminism was rampant in the culture then, too.
But I think now it's just all holds barred.
Nobody's hiding anything.
All the cards are on the table.
I completely agree.
It's funny.
Masculinity and Christian nationalism, right?
So, Russell Moore loves masculinity and he loves Christian nationalism so long as it's on the other side of the world, right?
If you're in Ukraine, be a Christian nationalist, man.
Let's hunker down.
Let's secure these borders, right?
All of a sudden, it's wrong, which really just goes to show that Christian nationalism is a boogeyman that needs to be debunked.
But beyond that, Christian nationalism isn't actually what they hate.
What they hate is they hate America, right?
It's America last.
That's the commitment because they're totally fine with another nation improving itself, another nation securing its borders, another nation standing up to someone who's invading, all those kinds of things.
They're completely fine with that.
They just don't think that America should do it.
So it's America has to be last.
Go ahead.
And I think, you know, you ask a question like, at least I do.
I say, well, why America?
Why hate America so much?
Why can I be Ukrainian but not American?
I think, look, they're very smart.
They know that America is built on, you know, this Western Christendom.
Without the Reformation and Puritanism and all those things coming to this country, you don't have a country the way it is now.
They know that they have to erode those foundations.
I think really what we're seeing, you know, somebody like Michael Fallon has pointed to this a number of times, but just accelerating the contradictions in our culture.
Tear down the foundations.
Patriarchy built America.
And that's why, even now, even though we're experiencing judgment, we're an apostate nation, all these things, even now, there's still leftover blessings from covenant faithfulness from years behind us.
And they know that.
And so, yeah, we have to attack sexuality.
The irony I always point to as well is like we're encouraging the men to be effeminate and wear like super tight skinny jeans and, you know, just, Even the mannerisms, the 11th commandment, the niceness, something that you've talked about, the empathy, all of those things, it's all effeminate mannerisms.
Well, we teach the men to do that, but then what are we telling the women?
Who are all the people who are going through these transgender surgeries?
Predominantly, it's women who are being encouraged to do this.
Authority and Divine Stations00:15:27
So, masculinity is toxic, and yet we're telling all the women, you need to become a man.
It literally just makes no sense.
And I think the reality is the fundamental understanding that you have to have is look, they want chaos.
Yes.
You know, This is about creating chaos, disorder.
That's right.
And God's instrument for order in creation, what Paul says to Titus, the instrument for creating order is wise fathers, right?
So if you want to tear down creation, the best thing you go after the dads, you go after fatherhood.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And that's what has happened.
I mean, anybody who, any young man who is trying to be a man, usually very quickly is taken aside and reprimanded by.
People in the church and said, Don't do that.
Don't be like that.
That's not like Christ.
And it's rough.
So let's actually look at that text that you referenced Matthew chapter 11, verse 7 through 12.
Verse 7 through 12.
I believe that's what you're referencing is Matthew 11, 7 through 12.
Soft men, right?
And palaces.
You want to read that for us or you want me to read it?
I've got it right here if you want me to do it.
Yeah, absolutely.
I can read it starting in verse 7.
Yeah.
As they went away, Jesus began to speak to the crowds concerning John.
What did you go out into the wilderness to see?
A reed shaken by the wind?
What then did you go out to see?
A man dressed in soft clothing.
Behold, those who wear soft clothing are in kings' houses.
What then did you go out to see?
A prophet?
Yes, I tell you, and more than a prophet.
This is he of whom it is written Behold, I send my messenger before your face, who will prepare your way before you.
Truly, I say to you, among those born of women, there has arisen no one greater than John the Baptist.
Yet the one who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.
I think verse 12 is helpful too.
From the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven has suffered violence, and the violent take it by force.
John the Baptist was a camel skin.
Yeah, he was.
Locust voice crying out in the wilderness.
John the Baptist was masculine.
He was a man.
And Jesus is saying, You didn't come out into the wilderness to see a pansy.
You didn't come out here to see somebody dressed in soft clothing.
You didn't come out to see this effeminate man.
Those people.
And I'm curious to hear your thoughts.
I think that Jesus is being intentional when he says, If you want to see them, you can find them in the palaces of kings.
I think of politicians.
I think of rulers and kings.
That's right.
He's like, if you want to find soft men, go look at the civil magistrate.
Go over there.
Go look in his palace.
Go look in the White House.
Go look.
You find soft men usually, not always.
We've had some good men.
George Washington, praise God for him.
We've had some good ones, but you find a lot of soft men more often than not in positions of power, in palaces.
What do you think about that?
Yeah, you're absolutely right.
And I think it fits the context as well.
You look at Jesus' ministry, some of his harshest words really are for two groups of people, right?
It's for the apostate Israel, the religious leaders of the day, who are what?
They were in bed with the Roman Empire and people who are acting in a wicked manner, right?
Later in the gospel, you're going to hear them say, you know, we have no king but Caesar, right?
So it's this, it's really the same.
I think just a, you know, history doesn't just repeat, it rhymes.
And so one of the issues is, You see much of the same thing happening today, right?
You have politicians acting very beast like.
And then you've also got the apostate church.
We literally have the mainstream big Eva church, I would say many of them are apostate.
They've literally said, you know, the words of Paul aren't the words of Jesus.
Yeah.
Right.
And we're setting scripture against itself.
So just flat out contradicting scripture, sola scriptura, straight up attack on scripture.
Right, and the authority of it.
So, I think when you look at that, it makes sense.
Jesus is going after them in Matthew's gospel and in this passage as well.
You can look at the same thing too, what's happening with our leaders today.
Why is it?
Russ Moore in 2007 was talking about the goodness of patriarchy.
Yep, I remember.
Well, what happened?
I was at Southern Seminary and he was there.
And at the time, honestly, there was not a shred of, wow, Russ is going soft or he's going woke or any of that stuff.
Happening.
But I think what happens is these guys realize where the power and the money and the fame is.
That's right.
They realize where the culture was going.
And over time, what you see is look, they're not leaders.
They're fundamentally playing the wind.
They're playing the waves.
That's exactly right.
We've called them grifters for a very specific reason.
And it's interesting, too.
The other thing to point out in the passage from verse 12 people love to get around.
How do I get around the word violence in this verse?
Part of masculinity is not only just like a spiritual violence and a holy zeal.
I'm not saying, I think that's there as well.
But there's a time for men to be violent.
There's a time when you do need a sword and you need.
You need to defend, and you'll do that in a righteous fashion.
It's just interesting because this is not Jesus, meek and mild, in the passage.
It's Jesus portraying a vision of masculinity in John that is, you might call it today, hyper masculine.
They probably call it toxic masculinity.
And that's what we're told to be.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And we're told that they're the ones who inherit the kingdom of God.
So, not just that we should be that because it's commendable, but if we're not that, then we should be concerned.
I think of, I can't remember exactly.
I think it's the interpreter's house in John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, where there are seven different visions that the interpreter shows to Christian, the main protagonist.
And one of them, I believe, is a man who's dressed for battle and he's storming a palace, like a kingdom.
And he's trying to get in, and it's heavily guarded by all these different armed men.
And he's wielding his sword and whipping it back and forth and thrusting and doing everything he can to get up the steps and into.
This kingdom.
And that, Bunyan says, is this vision of the text that we just read, Matthew 11, verse 12, that the violent take it by force, that there is no one passively waltzes into the kingdom of God.
It's through much trial and tribulation, which requires perseverance, it requires endurance.
And certainly, God sovereignly sustains his people.
So those who persevere have been preserved.
We recognize that.
That God is the, you know, he's the.
The active Asian who is ordaining and causing all these things to come about.
But the question is, but what is he doing it through?
So God ordains something, right?
God ordains the predestinated ends, but he also ordains the predestinated means by which it comes about.
And one of those means is masculinity.
That is one of those means.
And Pilgrim's Progress, the second book that's not nearly as famous.
But that really takes it from the individual Christian and focuses on the church and this corporate picture of inheriting the kingdom and journeying together as a community.
And that's what we see people like feeble minded, you know, and these weaker characters.
And it's the strong ones in the company, the masculine ones who get them through.
So it's not just that if we're soft men, we hurt ourselves.
If we're soft men, we hurt others.
And a lot of times the others, I don't want us to be hard men.
But since when do we give people what they want?
The last time I checked, we give people what they need, which just coincidentally happens to be not always what they want, but what God wants.
And so, you know, and hopefully in our discipleship as people mature, I feel like you could define spiritual maturity like this when your wants begin to align with your needs.
That's one way I would define spiritual maturity.
When I start to want what I need, right?
So I want ice cream when I'm three and I need green beans, right?
And hopefully when I'm an adult, I actually want.
Those green beans and not just need them to where I can have self discipline and do it on my own without somebody having to do an airplane spoon in front of my face to get me to open my mouth, right?
So that's part of maturity we are cultivating desire through discipline, cultivating new desires through discipline at first that are shaped around what we actually need and not just what we innately want.
And the world needs masculine men and the church needs masculine men.
Men.
Any thoughts on that?
Do you agree with that?
Yeah, absolutely.
I think that's huge.
We definitely need it.
I think even in the places where men are not present, you know, fatherhood being one of them, you see the just catastrophic effects.
But it also reminds me something in this journey of masculinity, looking at scripture.
One of the things that I began to see, because a lot of people would say this to me, they would say, look, sexuality is not a gospel issue.
Sexuality is not a central issue that we should be focusing on if a guy wants to be.
Masculine or not, doesn't really matter.
Obviously, the passages that we've looked at have helped, I think, clarify for me why that's not the case.
But one of the things that I also started to see was, you know, through Michael Foster and other people, when you look at the creational purpose in Genesis, Christ redeems us so that we can fulfill and be restored to that purpose.
And that's where we find so much of what men are for as well, right?
If you're going to be a protector, you're going to be a provider, you're going to fulfill the dominion mandate.
You're going to take a wife.
You're going to be fruitful and multiply.
In order to do these things, it takes hard masculinity.
And the irony is, I think, as people will argue with me about this, you can read anything like pre 1960, and people just took that for granted.
I think that's why a lot of times, even it wasn't talked about.
Even the concept of hard men, there's military books by that title, Handful of Hard Men.
It was very common to speak of men that way.
You got to harden up, son.
Life's tough.
Build some calluses on your hand, thinking even of the physical realities of what happens to your body, right?
You lift weights, what happens to your muscles?
Well, they stop being soft and squishy and they become hard.
And now they're useful for bearing the weight of responsibility.
So, really seeing that actually, this is related to the gospel.
This really is a part of man's identity and women as well, that your sexuality is central to your sanctification.
Like, we can't even talk about sanctification apart from sanctification according to your.
That's right.
Your sex.
That's right.
Yeah, no, that's huge too, because I think sometimes people, you know, they think of the fruit of the Spirit.
So part of this gets into our theology proper and doctrine of God, but they think of the fruit of the Spirit and they like to chop it up.
You know, so they think of the fruit of the Spirit as like nine different tools in a toolbox, and you pull out one for this particular task, and you put that tool back, and then you pull out another for a different task, you know.
Whereas, you know, we would say that the fruit of the Spirit, it's more like, instead of, if we say literal fruit, an apple and a banana and an orange and a pineapple, we would say, no, it's more like nine characteristics of, Just an apple, right?
That it's crispy, it's tart, it's also sweet.
It's, you know, so nine different characteristics because, and the reason why is because we're talking about the fruit of the Spirit, which simply means displays, manifestations, visible, observable, witnessable displays of the Holy Spirit.
And the reason why we can't chop up the fruit of the Spirit is because we can't chop up the Spirit, because the Spirit is God.
He is a simple being in philosophical terms.
And as both the Westminster and the 1689 confessions say, God is the most pure spirit without body parts.
Or passions.
And so, if you have the Holy Spirit, you have the whole Holy Spirit, not part of the Holy Spirit, which means Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, and also as the Son of God, divine second member of the Trinity himself.
My point is to say there was never a single moment in his earthly life that he was not embodying all of the fruit of the Spirit in fullness of measure at all times.
So, when Jesus is throwing over the money changers in the temple and he's fashioning a whip out of cords, he is modeling for us gentleness, perfect gentleness.
And so I think we've severed the spirit and we've severed the fruit of the spirit and we've severed Jesus and all these different things.
And so, as that pertains to your point, because a lot of people don't get this, you're absolutely right.
If we're discipling a woman and we're discipling a man, there is a difference.
And how do we know that there's a difference?
Ephesians 5: husbands do this, wives do this.
And it's not the same thing, it's two different things.
And if we want to be really controversial, Ephesians 6, right?
They're talking to a slave and a master.
Slaves do this, masters do this.
Do this.
Also, children, right?
The whole thing is about authority and different stations of life.
You know, 1 Corinthians, Paul talks about, you know, remain in whatever station of life.
And there is room, Paul says, to avail yourself if you can gain your freedom.
So there's nothing wrong with improving your station in life in terms of vocation and position and title and those kinds of things.
But by and large, we're all under the sovereignty of God in various positions of life.
And what it looks like for the fullness of the fruit of the Spirit to be at work in our lives in that station is going to be distinct versus somebody else in a different station.
And one station that doesn't ever fluctuate, that's not fluid, that doesn't move, is our gender.
It looks different for a man to be displaying the spirit and therefore the fruit of the spirit than for a woman.
So men and women are both called to gentleness, but gentleness in men and women looks different.
Would you agree with that?
Yeah, absolutely.
And you see that again in the household codes, in multiple New Testament books, right?
It's always broken down into men, women, children, usually are in there as well.
But what I think is so interesting about it as well is that.
You know, people always ask me, and it's weird because it's like the gay Reverend Helens who will say this on Twitter, but they'll be like, You're just chasing the current fad of patriarchy.
And I'm like, Okay, first of all, I don't know where that's actually a fad, but is that a current fad?
Praise God if it is.
Yes, they see it as a big threat.
All right.
Just like Christian socialism, huh?
That's a huge threat.
Yes.
Yes.
Amen for that one, too.
But it's really interesting to me because as you start to look at these issues, And you break down these household codes.
I always tell people, like, I didn't land on this position, or really just overall the gendered piety position.
Defending Patriarchal Design00:10:16
You know, we talk about things that are so, you know, unpopular culturally.
You know, women should be serving in their households and raising children, and this is part of their sanctification, yes, even their salvation.
And so, you know, not in the workplace, things like this.
People say, well, you're just doing that because it's popular, or you read some old book.
And really, it's always driving people back.
My fundamental conviction was look, this is what the scripture teaches.
It's actually inconvenient for me.
And I found this, you can identify with this, I'm sure.
I found this pastorally.
These are pastorally inconvenient texts for me to have to preach.
But as I'm preaching them, we believe in sola scriptura.
And so we're sitting there and we're going, but this is what it says.
I mean, Paul's not making, you know, in 1 Timothy 2, he's not making a cultural argument.
He's making a creational argument.
And it's like one of the most plain things you'll ever read and exposit as a preacher.
So, being faced with that, I think that's where I was really starting to become grounded in a biblical sexuality this is what scripture teaches.
I know it's hated in the culture, but this is what it says.
And it's timeless.
Yeah, you're right.
It's not unique to that place and that time.
It's not a cultural argument, it's a creation.
He's drawing from the created order.
And 1 Corinthians 11 is another example.
People like to say, well, this is what was going on in Corinth, you know, temple prostitution and those kinds of things.
But one, Paul says, if anyone wants to be contentious about these things, verse 16, 1 Corinthians 11, 16, we have no such practice in all the churches.
So, and the practice not being head covering, but the practice being contentious, argumentative about it, wanting to disobey apostolic commands.
And so, Paul right there says this isn't unique to Corinth, this position of a woman covering her head in worship.
This is in all the churches.
So, it's not just because something unique is happening in Corinth, like temple prostitution.
And then when he talks about it, he talks about, again, woman being made from man and for man, and woman is the glory of man, and man is the glory of God.
And this kind of language, it's about design, it's about, Creation.
It's not a momentary concept.
It is a timeless command that we've received from God that's built into the fabric of the way that He created the world.
And I feel like for no other reason, I would adhere to, you know, I would call myself patriarchal because we live in the Father's world.
God has revealed Himself to us as a Father, and He has sent to us also His Son, and He, not it, not she, but He, the Holy Spirit.
So we live in the Father's world.
The father has set up his world to function by a certain set of fatherly rules, and he rules and reigns in his world through fathers in the home, fathers in the church.
We call them elders, and to a lesser degree, deacons, and fathers in the state.
The civil magistrate bears the sword as God's avenger.
And I would say that the sword belongs to men.
And I would look at even Deuteronomy and things like that a woman not dressing like a man and not wearing his armor, his garbs, his weaponry, and those kind of things.
So if the civil magistrate bears the sword, Then I would say that the civil madness, by and large, should be men.
I understand there might be some administrative positions and things like that.
So the point is, in all these three primary spheres that God instituted home, church, and state, He has appointed fathers to be the conduit of His benevolence and His blessing and provision and protection and all these things.
So the Father's world, the Father's rules, and He reigns and blesses through the continent of earthly fathers in all three of these spheres.
And I don't know what word to use for that other than patriarchy.
You know, I just, yeah.
Yeah.
Go ahead.
Yeah.
I think, especially, yeah, when you examine the text, you look at Ephesians, especially.
Chris Wiley's really good about pointing this out.
You know, even Potter, you know, the P A T E R, you know, and just all these words like you can't even say family without saying father.
And it's all embedded in God's creation.
And I think, really, we come to the point.
This is actually Russ Moore's point that he made in a chapel.
Years ago.
This is like pre 2008, probably.
And I thought it was amazing.
He was talking about Romans 9, but it applies here as well.
And he said, listen, you know, Paul's response, he talks about in Romans 9, then also election in Ephesians 1.
Paul's response is to praise God for predestination and election.
So what we have to bring ourselves to is hierarchy and patriarchy is God's design.
And what we should do is not like begrudge it and not say, oh, that's his design.
I wish it was different.
We should actually be praising God for this.
This is good.
When you look at creation specifically, you know, the Lord made them male and female.
And then overall, this God says, this is good.
This is very good.
Right.
And so that, I think that's the other part of this is that it's not just that we should be on the defense.
And this is where I would encourage people too is like, I don't apologize for what Scripture says, right?
That's the beginning point for so much heresy and error in the church is feeling apologetic to the culture.
You know, sort of the Tim Keller model of like, well, let's follow, you know, Stephen Colbert's example of like, let's talk to the culture in terms that they can handle.
Right.
Well, you know, the reality is that sinful man cannot handle the truth of Scripture.
That's right.
Apart from the Spirit of God.
And so we're going to, what are we going to do then?
Are we going to hide behind our fig leaves?
No, we're going to boldly proclaim it and we're going to trust God and we're going to pray for the Spirit and we're going to ask God to transform these people's hearts and may they repent.
Because we love God.
But it's not going to be because.
I was just going to say, because we love God, but also because we love them.
Because ultimately, what Timothy Keller's ask is to do is to hate people.
Not just to hate God, which is first and foremost to hate God and disobey God.
That's right.
But to hate people.
Because if we only give man what he can handle, it goes back to that whole idea of trying to align.
What we want with what we actually need, which is a sign of maturity and namely spiritual maturity.
But the pagan doesn't have spiritual maturity.
The pagan does not desire what he actually needs, right?
Romans 8: the mind of the sinful man is not indifferent, it's not neutral, it's hostile, it is at enmity, at war with God and his law.
And so the mind of the sinful man does not desire, does not want, and therefore cannot handle.
The truth.
And so, if we give them only what they can handle, then what we have to ultimately reserve from them is the very thing that they need, the thing that would save them.
And so, we're not loving them.
We're hating them.
We are damning them to hell.
And we're not doing it for them.
I think we just need to quit pretending because you're right.
It's like, how did these guys who seemed solid, how did they go off the deep end?
How did they drift?
And the answer is it's the fear of man.
They love the glory.
Jesus said of the Pharisees, they love the glory that comes from man more than the glory that comes from God.
And they love the praise of men, and they became very popular because they did have some really good things to say, at least some good things to say.
And they became popular and not just popular within the church, but they began to be given prestige and welcome by people in the culture.
And they loved it.
They loved it.
Like the ring with Gollum, it poisoned their hearts, and they didn't want to.
They didn't want to give it up.
And so, as the culture continued to gravitate further and further from God, they made concession after concession after concession because they love the glory that comes from men more than the glory that comes from God.
But yeah, it is ultimately, I mean, that's what Keller's doing he's calling us to hate people.
He's basically saying, don't give them the gospel.
And if Keller was here, to be fair, in his defense, he would say, well, no, no, no, you just need to contextualize the gospel.
And I, oh my goodness, I can't stand that.
Because what he means by contextualize the gospel, Because I'm all for contextualizing the gospel, but in brief, I'll say it like this to contextualize the gospel, when we present the gospel to different cultures and different people and different places of life, what we're doing in our contextualization is we are utilizing everything we possibly can to make the gospel clearer.
But when other guys like Keller say contextualize the gospel, what they mean is obscure the gospel, water down the gospel, truncate the gospel, take the punch out of the gospel.
Weaken the gospel, make the gospel impotent.
That's what they water it down.
So, whereas Paul, when he contextualizes the gospel, he's making, he's taking everything and saying, all right, if I just give you my typical gospel presentation, you'll probably get it, but I really want to make sure you get it.
I really want to make sure you know that there's a thrice holy God who is the creator of heaven and earth.
And I really want to make sure you know that you've committed cosmic treason against him and that you, dust from the earth, have raised your fist in defiance of him and are worthy of his eternal, just torment and wrath for all of eternity.
I don't want you to miss that.
So I'm going to contextualize the gospel.
That's not how Keller uses the phrase contextualization.
No, and you can tell by the way that he's praising Colbert's gospel, quote unquote, gospel presentation, which was like, yeah, the pastor I was talking to after I watched that, he was like, he could have been talking about Buddhism.
It was so vague.
But I think what's interesting, all of this, and whether you're talking about the big, fast, and famous church models, whether you're talking about contextualization, You know, bringing brand marketing into the church as a strategy, no matter what you're talking about, and biblical sexuality, throw that in there too.
No matter what you're talking about, the fundamental issue, it goes back to Matthew chapter 11.
When I first came across that passage, kind of Toby Sumter was preaching on it.
I've seen it with new eyes, I think.
And I realized something.
The Cost of Previous Sin00:15:30
I was like, well, if you're going to be the hard man like John the Baptist, like you're going to get your head cut off.
John was hated, he had to live in the desert.
You don't grow up on the fear of man when you dress in camel's hair and eat bugs.
Yeah.
It's like God was hardwiring into John.
You cannot fear man.
You have to fear God.
And so I think when we've talked to people about, like, you know, how do you embrace this message?
Well, first of all, you have to fear God.
You have to love the glory that comes from God and not from men.
And listen, like, count the cost.
I mean, when I started the podcast, I've worked in the magazine industry and a bunch of other stuff.
Literally, bosses came to me and were like, yeah, you're going to get fired.
And I was like, you know, I believe it's true.
I believe it's a frontline battle in our culture.
And man, what have we heard for two years straight?
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, guys tell me this all the time.
Yeah, you're right.
But man, in my situation, it was just the cost would be too much.
I said, listen, the problem is somebody somewhere is going to have to stand up and say no.
And I know for a fact it's been costly.
I've had friends, you know, I have a Twitter account.
I have friends.
Literally, a guy called me and he said, hey, man, I just shared your tweet and I got fired.
And I said, what do you mean?
And it was literally like from 1 Corinthians 7, you know, wives should love your husbands.
You should not withhold sex from them.
Like straight what the passage says.
I didn't add hardly anything to it.
And the crazy thing is he fired, but his job was he was actually a professor at Southern Baptist Seminary.
They fired him.
I just can't.
And yeah, actually, it's like you can't even make this stuff up.
And so you're thinking about this, and it's like, okay, listen, it's going to be unpopular.
Some of us are just going to have to leave the charge and be hated.
And embrace really the spirit of John the Baptist.
You know, you go out, you, in a sense, you violently preach, you're confronting the idols of the day.
People will say the same thing to me, like, well, it seems like you're trying to aggravate the feminist.
I'm like, I'm not trying to aggravate the feminist.
I'm trying to preach the truth, but I know what the idol of the day is.
That's the thing.
That's right.
Like, Gideon, you know, it's not like, well, go out in the public square and just kind of like talk to them and see, like, build a relationship with them for a little while.
Right.
And then, you know, over time, as you build your relational capital, you know, you can speak to them in a way that the culture can handle and that they can handle.
No, what did he do?
He went and he burnt the altar down in the street.
That's right.
I think that's a huge part of what we just have to embrace that as part of what ministry is going to look like in our context.
Yeah, I completely agree.
I'm looking, trying to find a quote, but I'm not going to find it.
But it was Charles Spurgeon.
No, it wasn't.
It was Martin Luther.
It was Martin Luther, and he said, He said, Wherever the battle rages the fiercest, there the loyalty of the soldier is tested.
And I'm paraphrasing.
He said, If I fight with as much courage and bravery as possible on Every point of orthodoxy, but I shrink on the one point that currently is under fire, where the battle is currently raging, then I deny Christ.
Then I'm not professing Christ.
And I think that's what I.
That was pretty impressive, by the way.
I looked that up as you were reading it, and that was pretty darn close.
Okay, all right.
Yeah, so the only little difference was the finish.
He says, Go ahead and read.
Yeah, so it says, Where the battle rages, there the loyalty of the soldier is proved, and to be steady on all the battlefield besides.
Is mere flight and disgrace if he flinches at that point.
Gosh, that's a good quote.
I was close.
It's amazing.
But that's better.
You were.
Yeah.
That was.
That's a great quote.
So, with that, this is, I remember I did a short video one time that got some decent attention about how to tell if your pastor's a coward.
And I said, one of the ways to tell if your pastor's a coward is if he rails with pseudo courage against giants that are already laying face down in the dirt.
Right?
Oh, that's huge.
I think that's one of the things.
It's like, You know, the boy, you know, boys who shave, right?
You know, and you're hit, you're basically, you're hitting, you're hitting a giant that may have been a giant, right?
Toxic masculinity may have actually been a thing, but it hasn't been a thing.
Not by and large, not, of course, there are anecdotal evidence and one off cases and stuff.
But if we talk about at large plaguing the culture and the church today, today, that's not the issue.
The issue is not masculinity.
The issue is feminism.
We know that's the issue.
But what we'll see is we'll see guys attacking giants.
After some brave, some actually brave David already slayed them, right?
So it's like the people of Israel.
They're quivering, they're shaking as Goliath is not just taunting them, but he's defying God.
He's cursing and blaspheming God.
And David says, Who?
What in the world is going on?
Why is nobody cutting off this guy's head?
This uncircumcised Philistine who has the gall and the audacity to defy the armies of the living God.
I will cut off your head and feed your carcass to the birds this day.
And he does it.
And, and there's something in the men of, of the people of God that, that is, that is ignited in that moment that's kindled.
And boom, they pursue the Philistines and they do what they always were capable of doing, right?
It's not like we couldn't have done it without David.
They actually could have done it with, without David.
So long as it without David wasn't without the Lord.
So long as they had the Lord, they didn't need David.
They could have pursued the Philistines and Goliath and taken them all down, but they needed courage.
They needed to be in.
Couraged, inflamed with courage.
And I think, man, I think guys like you, guys like Doug Wilson, guys like Jeff Durbin, guys like Toby Sumter, guys like Michael Foster, the Christian men in our nation, especially and all around the world, need a couple of guys to just say, we can do it.
We can take them.
We can take them.
And then all of a sudden, what happens is, yeah, you get a lot of ridicule and yeah, you get a lot of flack and yeah, Uh, some people they hate you and they try to get you fired and they try to cancel you.
I'm talking about Christians, sadly, right now.
But there's also a ton of other people that you don't always see, but who are invigorated and inspired.
And they're like, he's right.
He's right.
I know he's right.
And they start taking their stands.
And we don't always see it, but they start taking us.
Maybe it's just taking a stand in their marriage, right?
I love Doug Wilson's concept of establishing a house of peace on the foundation of the solid foundation of lies.
And what he's getting at is you cannot tell your wife.
What she wants to hear if it requires deceitfulness simply to keep the peace.
That's not a true peace.
And so, one of the ways to be masculine, to be courageous, is to stand up to your own wife.
And that's not being harsh or anything like that, but just having the courage to actually love your wife enough to tell her the truth and not just what she wants, but what she actually needs to hear.
And so, there are a ton of men who've been listening to you and all these other guys, and we don't always see the incredible victories.
That God is bringing about by a few Davids.
And I know Matt Chandler would say, Well, you're not David.
And I was like, Well, I actually think, I know I'm not David, but I actually think that we should emulate godly examples of people in the Bible.
It's not just, it's, yes, Jesus, all the scripture points towards Christ, and Christ is the better David.
But that still doesn't do anything.
So don't follow David's example.
Okay, then follow Christ.
And David was a type of Christ, and he sets the same example for us.
So no matter how you slice it, we need to go after Goliath.
And when we do, All the men behind us who just a second ago their knees were shaking, the spirit of God comes upon them when they see things like that.
And then all of a sudden they're running right behind you.
Guys who were just moments ago cowering are all of a sudden shouting and charging into the battle.
And the men are there.
And they just need, you know, if you would just lead them, you know, William Wallace.
Yeah, I mean, it's absolutely.
William Wallace is exactly what I was thinking of.
You know, he tells the Bruce in the movie, You know, men don't follow titles, they follow courage.
And what you see, I was thinking as you were talking about that, it's a Billy Graham quote, but he said, Courage is contagious.
When a brave man takes a stand, the spines of others are often stiffened.
And, you know, fortunately, we have, and that's been kind of the cool thing, like hearing people's feedback.
But it is so, I mean, it's just the grace of God.
You hear these stories and you think, man, I was basically just, you know, trying to be faithful in this little sphere, and it's probably encouragement for other people.
You know, be faithful where you are.
If you have a 5, 10, 15 talent guy, it doesn't matter.
Be faithful with whatever talents the Lord has given you.
We have a unique opportunity, many of us in our day, you know, podcasts and stuff like what we're doing now.
But you have the opportunity, like you said, just to be courageous.
And we've had people say, I mean, these are the ones that get me.
Like, I'll get emails from women and they'll say, you know, I was disobeying my husband for years and I really bought the lie of feminism and I had to go to him and repent.
And I decided to quit my job.
And we're going to start having children.
I mean, I hear stuff like that and literally just brings tears to your eyes.
Yeah.
Because you're seeing that God is transforming people in the midst of all the chaos that's going on.
God is still so faithful in all of this.
He hasn't left us alone.
And there are people who are being faithful.
And the other thing I would say to pastors, you're bringing this up before, but I always called it expositional cowardice, right?
Where you're like preaching through a text and you're like, yeah, I mean, everything you said is, you didn't say anything that was a lie.
But you just passed right over the 800 pound gorilla in the room that we know.
And so often, I think, you know, I've asked myself this a lot as a pastor why don't I preach that the way that it ought to be preached?
Why, or at least why am I like, I want to draw back from it.
And I think every faithful man who's preaching is going to face those moments.
And the reality is, is because you know, you have, you know, in your churches, you know, you have feminists, you know, you have men who aren't leading, you know, you have men who are acting, you know, butch, and it's uncomfortable.
And you know that that's going to be pastorally inconvenient.
And you've got to, You've got to deal with those things.
You know that you have elders and deacons and people in your church that there's sin that people have left unaddressed for a long time.
And you're looking at it and you're saying, I'm going to have to deal with that.
And this is really where the masculinity comes in, as you were saying.
You're going to have to deal with your wife.
You're going to have to deal with your children.
By the way, you're going to have to start with yourself.
He who conquers must conquer himself first.
So, all of these things, this is where, to me, it's like courage on the big stage is like fun and glamorous sometimes.
But for me, where I learned a lot of this is just little habits in the trenches of I have to go talk to this person and I really don't want to.
And I could go into the conversation and I could be like, you know, kind of smooth things over and pull my punches.
Or I could just go in that conversation and say, like, look, brother, I think you've sinned.
I think here's where it is.
I love you.
And here I am.
Like, let's work through this.
Amen.
That's where a lot of the courage is going to show up.
Yep.
And at the end of the day, the Lord is faithful.
And, you know, if you do get attacked, if you.
It sounds like you lost some things.
There was a cost.
There's always a cost to discipleship, there's a cost to following Jesus.
But I had similar experiences.
I remember when I taught through 1 Timothy, it was 2019, taught through 1 Timothy.
And instead of speeding up, right, the 800 pound gorilla, I got to 1 Timothy.
I had mapped it out, and it was 1 Timothy 2, verses 9 through 15.
And I was going to do it in a week, and I decided to slow down.
And I spent a whole week just on the way that women dressed a man telling women how to dress.
And then I, you know, spent three weeks on a woman should not teach.
She must learn quietness and full submission.
I do not allow her to teach or exercise authority over a man.
I spent almost a whole week just on women will be saved through childbearing.
And so I spent four weeks on that text.
And in those four weeks, I kid you not, I lost about a third of the church.
About 40 adults left the church.
Did you get a lot of feedback from the people who left?
Yeah.
I got 20 page papers, emails from the men.
You know, and they were not quiet about it.
No, they weren't quiet.
And even some of the things that we've talked about so far on this episode, where I talked about the fruit of the spirit coming as a package deal, the spirit not being divisible in parts, a simple being, and the fruit of the spirit, all of them being present for the believer at all times.
You know, Jesus hadn't full measure, but the whole spirit is present for the believer, the indwelling spirit of God.
And it's our sin that is simply veiling the spirit at times.
And so, as we put sin to death by grace, as we mortify the flesh, Then the spirit shines brighter.
And as we're taking courage in this instance over here, it's not that we're putting gentleness to the side.
That's what gentleness looks like when applied to this situation.
And so I talked about all that, but then I also talked about that in the terms of, and the fruit of the spirit looks different in a woman and looks different in a man.
And so I talked about that, you know, and yeah, I was called a heretic.
I, you know, like 20 page paper.
I mean, people, they lost their minds.
I mean, they were.
Furious, furious.
You could see women on the back road, like, jotting out notes so that when they met with me later, they could criticize all the.
I mean, wow.
So there is a cost, you know, there's absolutely a cost.
But God is so faithful.
I mean, so yeah, there was a cost.
And, you know, but here I am now and planting a new church.
And now people, I don't have a bunch of feminists in my church because feminists don't like me and won't come to my church, you know.
Whereas before, it's a natural repellent.
Right.
So there's a cost to following Jesus.
But to be honest, there's also a cost to previous sin.
You know, like if I'm going to be honest, the cost that I was paying there was a retroactive cost that I had been storing up by my prior unfaithfulness.
And I think a lot of pastors aren't honest about that.
They're like, you know, I obeyed God and look at what it cost me.
Well, part of the reason it cost you so much in one instance is because you weren't paying that cost every day in little bites.
You know, it's like a penalty, right?
Like if you get a traffic violation or something like that and you refuse to pay the ticket, And it accumulates further fines and all these kind of things.
And it's like debt, you know?
And so a lack of obedience over long periods of time accrues a heavier cost.
Finding Rest in Obedience00:03:44
One of the ways, you know, Jesus, all those who are heavy laden and, you know, who are weary, come to me, I'll give you rest.
And it's like, what?
Jesus is going to give me rest?
Like the guy who says, take up your cross and fight.
Yeah, I'm going to give you rest.
And my yoke is easy.
My burden is light.
And it's like, how in the world is the yoke of Christ easy and his burden light?
Well, I would say one of the ways that it's, well, two ways.
Two ways that it's easy and light is one, he gives you his very spirit to empower you.
But two, he calls you to walk with him daily and you get stronger along the way.
And when you follow Jesus and you're paying the cost over a lifetime, it's not as taxing.
And so now, at my day to day life of obeying Jesus, I'm not experiencing huge fallouts.
Sure, online I still get blasted and stuff like that, but who cares?
A lot of times, that's something, you know, even my wife will just for fun will look at some of the YouTube comments and laugh together, you know, like, you know, like, you know, people making fun and they'll even make fun of my physical appearance, you know, just like low jabs.
Oh, yeah.
And it's a great opportunity to just, because who am I?
You know, it's a great opportunity to not take yourself seriously, laugh at yourself.
It's like, yeah, I am kind of ugly.
I kind of agree, you know, and, you know, but you just, it's okay.
Yes.
It's, oh, there's so much freedom, you know, and, and then in that freedom, as you're following Jesus, all these other people start to surround you.
Who actually have your back, who actually love you, who aren't going to stab you in the back and betray you or leave you, you know, because you started preaching something that's in the Word of God.
And it's like your relationships get fewer but richer, fewer but deeper.
That is so true.
And I was going to say, just through ministry and everything that we've been through, you kind of figure out like, because we were in a lot of the sort of like T4G style churches post seminary for a long time.
It was like every church I'd go to, they were kind of like, at some point, they'd be like, Yeah, you don't have to leave, but like this gendered piety, sexuality stuff, like, you know, you probably could find a better place elsewhere and be happier because they're so non confrontational about everything.
But what we found is it was sort of like Nate Wilson said this, but he said, When you're facing sharks, he said, the way you get them to go away is you lean in, like you show no fear, basically.
And so as we started to do that, it was progressive over time, right?
But within a couple of years, We really started to find our gang.
We end up at Refuge Church, Brian Sauvay, Dan Burkholder, pastors here.
But now it's exactly what you said.
Like, we're surrounded by people who are like, if we're going to war spiritually or otherwise, like these people have your back.
Some of the relationships that we've formed here, it's just unbelievable.
But I think it's that faithfulness of saying, look, I'm willing to be hated.
I know that I'm not popular, but I'm going to find my tribe and I'm going to be faithful to God.
And just over time, I mean, even the work stuff, you know, it was a cost I had to, you know, face out for a long time.
But it was funny too.
Like eventually I met a guy who was supporting the Hard Men podcast.
And he said, you know, I have a media company, you want to come work for me?
I'm like, well, I mean, look, God is blessing.
You know, he's taking care of his people.
You know, same deal.
You're talking about what God's done with the church.
I think it would be my encouragement to a lot of men like, yeah, there's going to be initial fallout, but, you know, listen, God says, am I going to leave or forsake you?
No, never.
There's nothing that you lack.
The young lions suffer hunger and want, but you don't.
You know, the Lord is going to supply you richly.
And I would say that truly.
Trump's Soft Masculinity00:03:18
It's like, it's not like this.
This martyr's path of just woe is me, but God's richly, richly blessed.
Yeah, as we've leaned into the buzzsaw, that's right, amen.
And I feel like there's just, yeah, God is just waking people up left and right all around our nation.
I feel like, um, I mean, you know, us screaming in a microphone in a podcast has not done nearly as much persuasive, has not had nearly the persuasive effect of a year and a half of Joe Biden's presidency.
God bless Joe Biden.
That guy, man, he makes all of my arguments for me much, much, much more effectively than I could.
That guy has just shown how tyranny is terrible, how left politics and ideology and Marxism and socialism and all these and effeminacy.
Yeah.
Right.
I mean, that's something we talked about before we recorded, but soft men kill.
They lend towards the killing, the death of people all over the place.
13 Marines, you know, killed in combat, American citizens, you know, in Afghanistan.
Because Joe Biden is a soft man, right?
I know it's a multifaceted situation, but his softness is part of what happened there, you know, and the tyranny of children having to wear masks, you know, at school while adults, you know, are having parties unmasked and the hypocrisy.
And that is a soft man, president empathy, right?
We can't handle another mean tweet from Trump, you know, and like, and I'm not saying that Trump is a hard man.
He has some hard man.
He's weird.
It's like he's a hard man and a soft man in some way because there's so much self focus.
Yeah.
You know, and building up self.
And so, in some ways, I would say Trump actually is effeminate.
Although, of course, I voted for him and I appreciated his, you know, his four years in office.
And I'd be happy to see him again.
But, you know, I want to be fair and say, like, Trump was a soft man in some other areas.
But there's a way of being a soft man by being aggressive, but self focused, and you're actually insecure.
But there's another way of being a soft man where you put on this thin veneer of empathy and compassion.
And I'm a caring president.
I'm going to unite, you know, and it's all a lie.
It's all.
Yeah, it really is.
It's interesting.
I always said about Donald Trump, you know, he's sinning in the direction of authentic masculinity.
So a lot of it is sin.
That's a good one to say.
But, you know, it's kind of like the difference between.
Yeah.
I mean, you're sinning along the lines of masculine character traits.
So it's like, you know, he's talking debaucherously about, you know, women.
But, you know, a lot of people in the other camp, you were talking about pedophilia.
That's right.
And that's a very different thing.
That's a very different direction.
But I do think.
And it's a good example, and Jesus and John Wayne actually in the introduction.
It's like the talking points from the DNC when you read the first part of the book.
So, I'll spare you from having to do that.
But basically, Donald Trump was the thing that brought everything to light.
It brought these people out of the woodwork.
They absolutely vehemently hate this guy.
And I think a lot of it is because he's not, you know, quote unquote, deep state.
He's not part of the establishment.
He's a disruptor.
Pushing Back on Creation00:04:52
But the other part about it is he, again, he's sinning in masculine directions.
Even the stuff, you know, we were talking about with Ukraine, Russia, again, complex geopolitical situation.
But fundamentally, I mean, the memes are not wrong.
There's a reason this didn't happen on Trump's watch because he was, for all of his failures, he was not a weak person.
So you kind of combine this weak, sclerotic Joe Biden with the gynocratic rule of Kamala.
And really, what people don't realize is the Obama White House is really in office right now, in a sense.
Susan Rice is very much involved, John Kerry, all these people who created the original problem starting back in, you know, In the early teens of the 2000s.
But yeah, it fundamentally comes down to that.
But then it's so hypocritical because what's the response in all this, right?
Who are we praying?
We're praising Zelensky.
We're calling for military.
Military is like fundamentally, like I've talked to people in the military.
Yeah, they do these little PR stunts where the purple haired, whatever generals or, you know, the transgenders parade those people out there.
But when it comes down to it, they're not the ones fighting.
The ones fighting are your hardcore, tough, You know, Texas Bronk riding, you know, Chris Kyle types.
And there's a reason.
Like, we know that that's who you need to defend.
Men are made to be protectors, defenders, fighters, warriors.
It's in our nature.
You shed blood for your community, all these things.
So it's funny you get into the conflict and they're like, yeah, we need the men to settle up and go to war for us.
And it's, you know, again, we all know.
And this is what I would point to.
Chuck Knox says this all the time, but it's the metaphysical reality.
These are the realities of God's creation.
That's right.
This is how he made the world.
You know, it's like being mad at gravity, being mad that men are this way and women are this way.
You know, that's the reality.
Yeah.
The way I say it is you can push back.
So, part of the dominion mandate that's given to men is to push back against the curse that is on creation.
But there's a distinction in pushing back against the curse on creation versus pushing back against creation itself.
And so, when we try to cure cancer, we're trying to push back the curse on creation.
But when we try to shift up the genders, We're not pushing back on the curse of creation.
We're pushing back on creation itself.
And as a wise prophet once said in Jurassic Park, nature always finds a way.
You're not going to beat nature, no matter how much technology, how much science.
Nature, if you go to war against nature, nature will win.
And the reason why is because it's God's world.
And he has set it up in such a way that we ultimately cannot break his rules without consequences because God will not be mocked.
A man reaps what he sows.
And yeah, so any final thoughts?
I think this has been great.
I really appreciate you coming on the show.
Yeah, absolutely.
So glad to be on here.
It's been phenomenal.
We've certainly been given, I think, our fodder recently.
As you said, the last couple of years, I've just kind of marveled at the moment that it's been.
God has been so gracious.
And I would point to certain people like Michael Foster, Doug Wilson, Toby Sumter, Chuck Knox, people who have influenced me.
Super appreciate those guys.
One of the things that I would leave the listeners with.
And it stuck through my mind is in everything, you know, there's this whole like the world's coming apart thing that everybody resorts to every time something gets bad.
And no doubt, inflation, all these things are bad.
But something, particularly Michael Foster, always says to me is he's like, Eric, what a huge opportunity we have right now.
And I would just press that upon people.
This is like, I'm looking out there, Joel, and I'm seeing like the fields are white for harvest.
There are so many people for the first time in their life, they are seeing things they've never seen before.
They're saying, we have a problem.
And so, pastors, men especially, bring the message of God's design in sexuality.
Be men, get your households in order, love your wives as scripture calls you, lead them, rule.
In your homes, as you do these things, don't despair about global.
You have almost nothing that you can do about those things.
And God's not going to hold you responsible for that.
But what you do have responsibility over, you can go home, you can love your wife, you can raise your children in the fear and admonition of the Lord.
And that does make a difference.
So be like Levin in the world.
Amen.
Thanks so much for coming on, Eric.
I appreciate it.
Absolutely.
Thank you, Joel.
Thanks so much for listening.
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