Pastors Joel Webbin and Eric Kahn argue that feminism, 1960s welfare policies, and no-fault divorce laws have exacerbated fatherlessness, leading to unchecked female depravity. They contend that refusing to rebuke women equates to hatred, citing statistics where 70% of divorces and 70% of domestic violence are initiated by women. The discussion critiques theological minimalism for ignoring total depravity's equal application, urging men to prioritize spiritual discipline over economic stability, even relocating to conservative communities like Moscow, Idaho, to safeguard their families' souls. [Automatically generated summary]
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Welcome to Theology Applied00:01:34
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Pastors who refuse to rebuke women are pastors who hate women.
Feminism is one of the chief causes of fatherlessness.
If we truly want to protect children, then we must esteem fatherhood.
And if we want to esteem fatherhood, then we must destroy feminism.
And if we are to successfully destroy feminism, then pastors must stop hating women in their churches.
By treating them as though they are nothing more than sinless victims.
So, in this episode of Theology Applied, I'm privileged to have back on the show Eric Kahn, host of the Hard Man Podcast and the King's Hall to discuss this vital topic.
Tune in now.
Applying God's Word to every aspect of life.
This is Theology Applied.
Well, welcome back to another episode of Theology Applied.
Destroying Feminism and Fatherhood00:03:25
I am your host, Pastor Joel Webbin with Right Response Ministries.
And in this episode, I am privileged to have as my special guest Eric Kahn from a whole host of different realms.
He is from Hard Man Podcast, the primary host there.
He's also on the King's Hall Podcast.
He is also one of the staff members and leading founding members of New Christendom Press, which hopefully by God's grace puts out great Christian theology for years to come.
And are you currently an officer at your church, Eric?
Yeah, that's right.
So this last year, I was a pastoral candidate.
And then I think it was mid December, I was officially installed as a pastor here at the church.
Yeah.
Great.
And then do you guys have, you know, because I know that you've all embraced a Westminster view of the covenants and pedo baptism.
But do you guys, with you and Dan and Brian, do you have the traditional Presbyterian model of a bifurcation of like teaching elders and ruling elders, or is it just pastor as a pastor?
Yeah, no, pastor as a pastor.
So typically it'd be like considered.
Like in the CREC, we would have called it like a two office church, is how it functions.
It is worth mentioning, too.
We have two guys, both named Kevin, and they are also pastors here.
They are 1689 guys.
So we have three who are, you know, Pado Baptists.
And then we've got two guys who are Credo.
And we have a lot of fun with that.
But it's been good.
We're in a unique situation with Utah because of the Mormonism that surrounds us.
So we've kind of said, no, we're going to.
We're going to fight together on this one and learn how to be friends.
No, that's great.
Yeah, I didn't know about the two other guys because I always think of you and Brian and Dan with the King's Hall.
And so I knew that all three of you, Brian was the last to come along, that he kind of held to the Pascal position.
That's where I would be in the 1689 realm.
But I didn't know that you had two other elders, Kevin and Kevin, who are.
Yeah, you hear less from the Kevins because one is a general contractor here in Ogden.
And then Kevin Love is the headmaster of St. Brennan's, but they don't have as much media exposure, I guess you could say.
You guys just won't let them get it, that media exposure, because they're Baptists.
You can't have that.
That's right.
All right.
Well, our topic for today you guys with Kings Hall, you just started a brand new season, your second season with that podcast, dealing with fatherlessness and the need for fathers.
And I can only assume, me and Nathan were joking about this, my assistant, before we started recording, but I can only assume that perhaps season three would be like how to be more productive and plotting along.
You know, my life for yours, you know, with Brightheart, and then your father hunger.
So I just feel like, luckily, Doug Wilson is prolific and he's written, you know, close to 100 books.
So, you guys, like, what season, what podcast would you do next?
Yes.
You'd be out of material.
Yeah, no, that's exactly right.
We are very much relying on Doug to continue his writing.
And we gratefully will rip off his ideas and, you know, continue to push those.
Yeah.
And in your defense, Doug even admits in his My Life for Yours that he rips.
War, Welfare States, and Apostasy00:06:58
That idea off of going through each room of the house.
I forget the guy that he references.
So, every idea is coming from someone who took it from someone else.
Any idea really worth having.
So, you're in good time.
Yeah, that's exactly right.
I quote Doug all the time.
So, today we want to deal with that fatherlessness.
We have an epidemic in our nation today.
And sadly, the evangelical church in many ways doesn't necessarily seem to fare better.
And so, yeah, I just want to talk about that.
And I thought we could begin.
You and I were talking as we were prepping a little bit.
We could talk with root causes.
Why is there so much fatherlessness in society today?
Today?
Yeah, it's a really good question.
A lot of it, I think, is really interesting societally in America when you look at, say, like the 1960s.
So, how much changed in the 1960s?
You've got a number of things.
Lyndon Johnson with his, you know, Papa Big Government Acts that went through Congress and were passed in the 60s.
Those had a huge bearing on the welfare state, which had a huge bearing on really replacing fathers.
And you see this especially in the black community.
Before the 1960s, Black fatherlessness was actually at a lower rate than among the white community.
So, but post welfare state, then you have fatherlessness soaring.
And I think you can make an argument Thomas Sowell and other people have certainly made this argument that the black communities were being targeted for a lot of the welfare.
And again, we've seen this play out.
They're trying to court voters, all this sort of thing.
But you see this thrust and this push for the state really to replace the father.
Even today, you see it with stuff like Black Lives Matter, in that, you know, obviously affecting the Black community, but Black Lives Matter, they're against nuclear families.
But originally, when all that stuff became prominent in 2020, the one thing that they were especially against was fatherhood.
So they would talk about non nuclear families.
They really did not appreciate this idea of any sort of patriarchal father figure of the home.
So again, the state is designed to replace that.
I think you also have a lot of legal factors.
1964, you have Ronald Reagan.
And you've got the really first divorce laws going through with the no fault divorce.
So, 1964, Reagan is the governor of California.
He passes that.
Most people are usually shocked, by the way, when you find out that was Reagan.
He would go on to say it was one of the things he regretted doing and probably as a conservative for a really good reason.
But fundamentally, what you've had because of those legal changes, it's very easy to divorce your husband.
You see it in the red pill and sort of the men going their own way movements today.
Right, where they're starting to recognize, like, you know, why is it that a wife can cheat on her husband?
She can leave him, take the children, and he has to pay for the whole thing.
He may not actually even biblically righteously, he may not be at fault at all, but he's still going to bear the burden.
I think some of those things have certainly impacted culture.
And then I think at the church level, you can look at that and you can say, well, you really have this is the way I look at it.
Okay.
In Exodus, you have the golden calf and you have Moses.
There's an apostasy that happens.
And then immediately the people fall into sexual immorality.
Well, I mean, you can look at the 1960s, that's the sexual immorality.
But there was an apostasy that happened first in America.
And you can see this in the post, you know, and we call them the greatest generation, but I think they were already struggling.
And the result is 1960s, the boomer generation, really well known for the, you know, breaking down of traditional sexual mores in society.
And so all those things, too, are contributing to you have skyrocketing rates of children being born out of wedlock, really a huge factor in the breakdown of the family.
Right.
What do you think some of the reasons were for this apostasy that kind of really did happen before the boomers with the greatest generation?
My suspicion is that part of it just had to do with seeing such atrocities in the world and just thinking, how could there be a God?
Do you think it's deeper than that?
Do you think that that was one of the major factors that they just didn't have a full orbed theology for dealing with sovereignty of God and suffering or those kinds of things?
Yeah, I think it's a couple of factors.
Number one is post enlightenment thinking certainly was coming to fruition, right?
It had been around, obviously, for a while, but I think really coming to fruition, and you're seeing the long term fruits of it start to come out of World War II.
So I think that's a huge part of it.
But I also think World War I, in particular, when you unpack what was going on in that war, you really had Western Christendom foolishly going to war with each other.
So before we have Mao and Stalin and Hitler and Mussolini and all the fascist communist dictators who take over the world, before that, you have Really, cousins in England and Germany, Prussia, and then also in Russia going to war with each other.
And you've got Christendom slaughtering each other on the battlefield for fundamentally stupid reasons.
This is why, in this time period, it's a cataclysmic shift because it's really the undoing of the West that comes out of World War I.
And I think that legitimately shook a lot of people's faith.
This is one of the reasons it's usually one of the biggest critiques of post millennialism that we find, right?
Because of what happened in World War I and II, people say, you know, post mill theology is dead.
You know, the dream of Christendom really came crashing down.
So we would obviously disagree with that.
But I think we do have to acknowledge the world in many ways came unglued during that time period.
And so what we're living with today is really like, you know, kind of the aftermath of World War II, what was established since then.
You can see a lot of it even in, you know, American politics and American dispensationalism with the eventual founding of the state of Israel and then, you know, I grew up with this in dispy churches where it's like, you know, we're flying Israeli flags on our front porches and stuff like that.
So I think that just shaped a lot of it.
And I think, quite frankly, if you talk to a lot of the greatest generation, they didn't really have good bearings.
You're like 50 to 60 years after the Civil War for a lot of those guys, which is kind of hard for us to fathom, right?
That they also lived through that period.
That was a very disruptive period.
Calvinism was dying.
This is one of the other arguments that I've made is that patriarchy and Calvinism go together.
And with the rise of Unitarianism in America in the 1800s, you really saw Calvinism and Puritanism waning.
And those were the things that were holding society together, particularly the nuclear family.
Right.
Yeah, no, I agree with that.
Calvinism, Patriarchy, and Decisionism00:07:10
I mean, just from my personal pastoral counseling, anytime there's an objection or a hesitancy or just a fear of wives submitting to husbands and patriarchy, I've always noticed that it goes hand in hand.
It's usually the person who doesn't like Reformed theology.
Yes.
Believe it or not, not everybody in my church is a Calvinist.
Most are, you know, because I'm fairly outspoken in that regard.
It's a systematic way of theologically thinking that's going to influence everything that I, you know, every text that I cover.
Reformed theology is there.
But there are individuals who aren't persuaded by Calvinistic doctrine.
And often that's the same individual who struggles with patriarchy.
And I, you know, I think of what I believe it's Peter that he talks about, you know, and you are her daughter, speaking of Sarah who called her.
Husband Abraham, her lowercase l, Lord, Master, you know, the head, her head.
And he says, You're her daughters if you do likewise, if you follow in her example.
But then he goes on and says, And do not fear anything that is frightening.
And one of the things that I think gives us peace, whether we're a man or a woman, we all have someone, human authority placed by God in our lives that we have to submit to to varying degrees according to the word of God.
And to know that there's a Lord of lords.
Right?
Abraham was, you know, when you think like, who are these lords that Jesus is Lord of, right?
He's king of kings and Lord of lords.
Well, he's king of earthly kings and he's king of earthly lords.
And one example of an earthly lord is a husband.
And to know, you know, as a wife, that there's a Lord over this Lord who loves me and who is sovereign over this lesser Lord, my husband, and guiding him, you know, that causes the fear associated with the commandment to submit to your husband to not be so daunting, you know, that you don't have to fear that which is frightening.
But if you don't believe that God's sovereign, You know, then, yeah, it's like, well, I know my husband.
I don't, you know, I know his flaws, I know his weaknesses.
And so, at least if in no other way, I see a correlation there.
Is there another correlation that you're referring to, Calvinism and patriarchy?
Yeah, no, I think that's right.
And then I think too, like, you'll watch, like, you know, Caddy Stanton and the other ladies who are pushing early wave feminism, which a lot of people mistakenly today are like, oh, first wave was fine.
No, it really wasn't.
You look at their theology and their background.
Those women were sincerely trying to replace male pastors, slowly, granted.
But yeah, so they come on the scene, they're pushing feminism, and you can read their writing.
And the thing that they hate is Calvinism because, you know, it's kind of like the reaction you would see people having to God's sovereignty, right?
When people first come in, introduced to that doctrine, it's like, oh, yeah, man's responsibility, God's sovereignty.
They get really frustrated.
You can see it in them, but it's the same thing when you're talking.
About patriarchy, and you're talking about submission.
Like, just look up in the Greek in Ephesians 5.
What does submission actually mean?
It means somebody's in charge and somebody isn't.
It means hierarchy, a number of those things.
But it's also interesting.
I think the connection also would be that, you know, you ask what has caused fatherlessness, feminism.
I mean, feminism has been a cancer in the bones of the nuclear family.
And it's something that I think today in the church, especially, instead of addressing that, In calling that out, what pastors have done is said, like, okay, let's do the Tim Keller, let's try to make a way for them to coexist.
Right.
You know, which fundamentally has been like, you know, if you or I were to say, well, maybe I can just live with the cancer.
Maybe it won't destroy me.
Right.
Yeah.
How to live with cancer.
Yeah.
The third way, you know, Keller approach has been that in itself has been a plague on modern evangelicalism for quite a while.
So the rise of feminism, and I think we could probably root, you know, no fault divorce within the larger banner of feminism.
And then, you know, you said that, uh, With feminism, there was this simultaneous thing happening of like there's this aversion towards patriarchy, but also the turning away from classically reformed doctrine and an aversion towards Calvinism.
Do you feel like any of that had to do with, you know, I always think of Charles Finney and the second great awakening that wasn't so great.
I mean, his systematic theology, I've read bits and pieces of it.
I can't read the whole thing because I, you know, my IQ would plummet and I would no longer be qualified to be, you know, a husband or a father or a pastor.
So, you know, you Can't read too much Finney and still be sane.
But the little bit that I have been able to stomach, I mean, the guy was just a quack.
He was, he was, and he was a God hating, like not just, he wasn't just stupid.
He was wicked.
He was a wicked man.
And so just hated the word of God and twisted it and tweaked it every chance he got.
And I feel, I feel like, you know, because the first great awakening, it's like you've got, yeah, you've got the Wesleys, you know, but you've got Whitfield and you've got, you know, Edwards.
And, you know, it seems like with that rise of decisionism, emotionalism, This emphasis on man and his will and his choices seems like a lot of that came in the second great awakening.
And I'm sure we can find traces before that, you know, going all the way back to the Enlightenment.
But do you think that has anything to do with it?
Some of the Charles Finney stuff?
Yeah, I absolutely do.
I think it's huge.
And then kind of later influence, but Billy Graham.
I actually believe it or not, Joel, I tortured myself by reading Jesus and John Wayne.
And one of the interesting things about that book that I think it may be the only thing that is.
Historically accurate in the book is kind of her description of how Billy Graham bought, he really brought mass communication to Christendom.
And, but that ended up being the death of Christendom and the rise of like the big, fast, and famous megachurch movement, like everything in megachurch movements that we see today.
And we think it, this is so cool.
It really was Billy Graham.
And I think that that culture has so dominated.
Well, the main thrust of Billy Graham was, well, if we're going to appeal to all of America through like a TV crusade type thing.
Then we have to gear our content so that it's ecumenical, which means we kind of have to water things down.
We have to focus on quote unquote core doctrines.
So Billy Graham is really an early form of like gospel centered types of ideology where let's just focus on the main thing, everything else, let's kind of ditch it.
And I think slowly that's just the watering down of Christendom and of Christianity in America.
It makes it susceptible to things like feminism, right?
To the point today where like even the conservative movement, As a whole, even the part that would call itself, you know, mainline Christian.
Why We Fall Back Too Soon00:05:36
I mean, you know, we've kind of said this over and over again.
It's like they're kind of limp wristed and impotent because they don't want to unleash scripture.
They don't want to go to headship and patriarchy and hierarchy and all the things that we find there.
They're like, well, you know, let's let women work and maybe they can be pastors, but, you know, let's, but slowly the ground gets eroded and it's like, well, what's left?
Not a whole lot.
Right.
Yeah.
You're absolutely right.
I think, you know, it's funny, but fundamentalism, and I know you agree with this because I've heard you talk about it, but, you know, a lot of different phrases that we could use, right?
To the theological minimalism, you know, or the just whittling down to the lowest common denominator, you know, this idea of here are a few doctrines and we're going to defend, you know, these five or six doctrines because the, you know, the church is under attack.
The Christian faith is under attack.
And so we need all the fighting men we can get to link arms and preserve, you know, what is most precious.
And it's, you know, what's most precious?
Well, you, you know, you could, you could print it on a track.
You know, it's, it's, you know, it's about, you know, 350 words.
And, um, That's what's most precious, and that's what we're going to defend.
And so you let go of all these other things, but it's a faithless strategy.
It's too conservative.
It's fearful.
It's almost like if you think of the Battle of Helm's Deep, and it's like, all right, this wall has been breached, fall back to the inner wall, and then we're going to fall back again.
Well, there is a time for a tactical retreat.
I do think that there is a biblical basis for that.
Employing that strategy.
But at the same time, you don't want to fall back too soon.
Sometimes it's like, you know, like one orc, you know, just barely, you know, climbed over the wall.
And we're like, fall back, you know.
And it's like, wait a second.
Like, why are we surrendering all of this ground?
Because what we don't realize is that, you know, you fall back.
But what just happened is now this whole wall is breached in that whole portion of the city of the kingdom, all of its resources, all of its weaponry.
All of its strengths, all of its advantages, tactical advantages, are now in the hands of the enemy.
And so I think in some ways it was just whether it be apathy, theological and just spiritual apathy, or whether it be cowardice, but, you know, probably a little bit of both, but falling back too soon and surrendering some of these things and saying, well, it's okay.
We can, you know, we can write it off.
Like, yeah, it's a compromise.
Yeah, it's a surrender.
But God will be pleased in the end because we've preserved what God cares about the most.
You know, we're gospel centered.
And And then gospel centered just becomes a euphemism for really gospel myoptic.
It's only the gospel.
It's gospel, I've stopped using the phrase to describe myself, which is a shame because on its face, it's a good phrase.
And in the technical sense, I am a gospel centered Christian.
But I no longer use it unless I have time to offer a 15 minute disclaimer because gospel centrality has been steamrolled into gospel myopticism.
And the best way I could illustrate it is.
It's basically become the young, reformed, and restless, you know, hip way of saying, I'm a red letter only Christian.
That's, you know, and here's the thing the red letter Christian who's like, just give me the words of Jesus, not the words of Paul, not the words, you know, like as a, you know, it's only the words of Jesus that are actually from Jesus, you know, and then this was all, you know, it's not inspired by the Holy Spirit.
But the funny thing is, the red letter Christian is actually in a better spot than today's gospel centered Christian because at least the red letter Christian with the words of Jesus, that includes both law and gospel because Jesus actually gave commands.
Whereas, like today, the gospel centered Christian, it's not like take the red letters from Jesus and then go ahead and divide that by about 10.
You know, because I mean, Jesus, so much of what he said was about hell and about money and about greed.
And these are the commandments of God, not one jot or tittle, you know, will pass away.
Heaven and earth will pass away before this law.
Like, Jesus loved the law and he preached the law.
So, I mean, even the Sermon on the Mount, you know, how, what, what's, you know, percentage of those three chapters in Matthew are only gospel, you know, and so, so gospel centered has basically, if you wanted to, you know, define it in real clear terms, you're looking at probably maybe 1% of the Bible.
So, when someone says, I'm gospel centered today, most of them, not all of them, because some of them still use the phrase and they mean it in the way that I do or the way that you do.
But a lot of them, I would say more than half, If they say I'm a gospel centered Christian, what they're essentially saying is I'm a Christian who believes about 1%, 1% to 2% of the Bible.
Yeah.
You think that's fair?
Yeah, I think it is fair.
And like you're saying, it just becomes this great watering down.
And then I think that becomes the problem.
You could even see this in the 60s, where the church, because they had gone in many ways fundamentalist, you had a lot of the fundamentalizing, let's build around core doctrines.
Well, what comes in the early 60s?
You've got the birth control pill, which is just like a small meteor that becomes enormous and leaves like an earth wide crater now.
Gospel Centered Faith Watered Down00:15:03
But it was, I think, because the church, if you're going to say we just have core doctrines, well, you know, is conception a core doctrine or the Bible's teaching on conception?
For those people, the answer would be no.
And so it was kind of like, well, yeah, fertility and fruitfulness, you know, don't worry about that.
It's not the gospel.
And really, what they mean is soteria.
It's not.
The doctrine of salvation, right?
And I think that that becomes a problem though, because look at the church today.
I mean, they're not equipped to deal with the sexual issue.
That's been the core front of the battle.
I think I was listening to, you probably saw this on Twitter, but like, you know, there were more videos of JD Greer talking about how like the Christian church needs to be the safest place for somebody to come out as transgender.
And I was like, JD, what are you?
I mean, if you had been taking a theologically maximal position and you Had read cover to cover and you've been studying this issue, like most faithful pastors should have been for the last couple decades or even a decade, then you're going to know that there are actually clear answers to this.
But yeah, that's the state of the church.
And for the record, the church should be the safest place for somebody to, because what we're saying is to come out as transgender or to come out as LGBT, QIL, LMNOP, whatever it is.
The church should be the safest place because what we're talking about is a place to confess sin.
So the church should be the safest place to confess sin.
If you have repentance in mind.
But first, exactly, when you say coming out, what do you mean by coming out?
That should mean confess sin because this is objectively sinful according to the word of God, even the desire, concupiscence, even the desire of sin.
And then, what do you mean when you say safe?
Safe in the sense that it's the place that when sin is confessed comes alongside you to help you.
Mortify your sin by grace so that your soul doesn't go to hell?
Amen.
Yeah, the church should be.
But what you mean, JD, when you say the safest place to come out, is you don't mean safest for your soul eternally when you confess sin by helping you put it to death.
You mean the place that will affirm your sin.
This should be the place that won't correct you, that won't disagree with you, that won't say anything that's going to hurt you or offend you or any of these.
And we know that.
What he's saying.
We know that that's what Andy Stanley is saying.
We know that, you know, the pastor that the clip's been going around, you know, in the Twitterverse from, you know, Rick Warren's church, you know, saying, well, I don't know if, you know, two gay dudes, if two sodomites are married, and then all of a sudden, you know, they become converted and they start going to your church and they ask one of the pastors for counsel, like, should we get divorced?
Well, God hates divorce.
That's a hard one.
That's, man, that's a toughie, you know, and you were never married.
Right.
It's just, yeah, exactly.
You were never married, you know, and he throws in, you know, he throws in the issue of polygamy.
You know, and says, Well, you know, what about when you're doing, you know, evangelism in an Islamic country, you know, and a man has five wives, you know, and then he comes to Christ?
Do you tell him, you know, like to divorce four of them?
Which one does he get to keep, you know, or is he bound to keep the first and the other four were illegitimate?
And even that is something that, like, we just, we're too bashful, right?
We're too embarrassed by the word of God to be, because there's a clear answer to that.
In my opinion, the answer is that man is a Christian.
His wives, they are now a Christian household.
His wives need to confess and obey the gospel and confess Christ as Lord.
They need to train up their children in the fear and admonition of the Lord, and he can't be an elder.
And you don't say that this was right or that he should do it again.
But the difference is it's a category difference.
Two dudes aren't married, it's not marriage.
We can talk about all the flaws with polygamists, that marriage, and the flaws that Abraham shouldn't have married Sarah's servant.
That was a bad move.
Lamech is The first example of polygamy in the Bible, and he's not a great guy to emulate, you know, emulate his example.
He's not, you know, but, but the fact that we, we, we don't even, that we can't even detect a difference is just shows us how far down the rabbit hole of perversion we've gone.
So, any, any other thoughts on that?
If I've got some other questions, go ahead.
Yeah.
Just kind of wrapping that all up, I would just say, like, what we need to see a lot of times as Christians is that, okay, all the promotion of homosexuality, all the promotion or the, Even desensitization that is going on, so that you know, you watch so much Will and Grace, or you know about it in the culture, it's in every movie, so that you become your gag reflex becomes desensitized.
We have to fundamentally understand all of that is a war on fatherhood, it's a war on families, it's a war on God's order and structure.
They'll try to make you believe that two dudes who you know purchase on the black market a child and then fly home with him that they're doing a loving, familial, fatherly thing, they're not.
And so I think we just need to continue to point that out and see that all these gross forms of perversion of fatherhood or just direct attacks, on the other hand, we have to see that all of it is they're trying to destroy ultimately the fatherhood of God and the order that he's created in the world.
So the bent is chaos.
And then again, as Christians, we have to oppose that satanic push from the enemy.
Amen.
Yeah.
The attack, when it really comes down to it, is an attack not on fathers, but the father, the father of life.
Yes.
From whom all blessings come from, and who all earthly fathers flow from.
And ultimately, their authority resides with him.
There's no inherent authority, human authority.
It's all vested authority that comes from God.
And because God is immortal, and no one can, he dwells in brilliant light, unapproachable light.
He's invulnerable.
Nobody can get God.
So Satan always attacks his image bearers and fills the heart of wicked men and wicked women to attack his image bearers, right?
If I can't take out God, I'll take out the next best thing.
And so you're absolutely right.
So So there's the whole issue of theological minimalism, fundamentalism in all the wrong ways.
We're not using fundamentalism to say, you know, a guy who believes in six literal days of creation and a young earth.
I'm one of those guys.
I'm pretty sure you're one of those guys.
Yeah.
Yeah.
We're both, you're like, yeah, we're both Christians.
Amen.
You know, so when we say fundamentalists, we're not talking about guys who just believe the Bible.
We're talking about fundamentalism in the sense of guys who have truncated the Bible into, you know, four or five things.
And so that theological minimalism, that lowest common denominator, You know, and the rusting, eroding away of a robust, you know, Christian theology, that was an issue.
And then, you know, you're saying the greatest generation and, you know, feminism, and that's where feminism came in.
All these things are different contributors.
No fault divorce was one of the things you mentioned.
All the multiple, multifaceted, you know, attack on fathers and fatherhood has been on decline.
So, all that being said, where are we at now?
You know, one of the things that we were talking about before we started recording is just some of the statistics now, you know, in terms of like how much, how rampant divorce really is.
And when it comes to divorce, you know, because what I continue to hear people, you know, do, you know, the classic, you know, Mother's Day sermon is, you know, thank God for mothers, Father's Day sermon is, you know, do better men, you're lousy.
And so still to this day, when you think of divorce and these kinds of things, like most pastors and most Christians, they think, yeah, men are adulterous, you know, and they're porn habits and, you know, and, And yeah, men are sinners.
Men need Christ.
Men need to man up and to repent and to lead in repentance and all those things.
But that's, I just feel like we're not addressing the problem because we're just not willing to look at the cold, hard facts.
We're not willing to live in reality.
And the reality is that men are sinners, but women are sinners too.
And some of the statistics are very unfavorable towards women.
Can we look at some of those?
Yeah, you're absolutely right.
And I think it's because it creates this environment where we just give women a pass on everything.
So I think there's sort of like a, you know, we talk about, I have talked about with Michael Foster, like vintage foolishness, right?
Foolishness that matures generationally and gets worse over time.
I think this is certainly true on the women's sin because it hasn't been dealt with.
So, yeah, I mean, these statistics go against everything that you find in the mainstream media, but you've got 70% of divorces in America are initiated by women.
70%.
That is an astronomically high number.
70%.
Yeah, 70% of women are initiating divorces.
And then this is a really interesting kind of subset of this.
When you go to college education, so college educated women initiate divorce at a rate higher than 90%.
Okay, so just to make sure that people don't miss that, because this is staggering.
So you're saying across the board, out of every divorce that happens in America, 70% of those divorces and married couples in America are initiated by the wife, not the husband.
But the wife.
That's correct.
And so that leaves 30%.
So that means, you know, 70 is over two times.
So every time you see a divorced couple, you've got, for every one of those, you've got almost two and a half times the chance that the woman is the one who initiated that divorce, not the man.
And then you're saying for women who are college educated, that it's over 90%.
So over nine times.
Yeah.
But it's, you know, but men need to be better and women are great, right?
Yeah, and that's kind of what's interesting about it is like, okay, so you go to the Matt Chandler stuff, you know, Jesus wants the rose.
He's just the stuff that we kind of laugh at, but yet it's still predominant in the churches where, you know, I know it's different at our church.
I'm sure it is at yours as well.
But, you know, we're actually preaching to women and saying, hey, you know, you have to deal with the sins that are particular to women.
And here's what they are here's the ways that you're prone to sin against your husband and nag him.
And, you know, on and on the list goes.
So we address that, but the culture at large doesn't.
In fact, what we're told, Uh, there was a good book by Christina Hoff Summers, it was called The War Against Boys, and it goes back to like the mid 80s to present day.
It's basically talking about how, like, the whole education system is like the world is slighted in favor of men, and women are always getting the short end of the stick.
But then she goes through and she unpacks that, and she's like, It's the opposite, the opposite is actually true that women are favored at every turn.
And so, here's a female author saying that and saying, No, no, that literally, like, the entire school system is set up so that women can succeed.
As a result, boys and men are suffering.
So, yeah, I think that what's the long term of all of that?
Well, I think that there's a lot of men who feel this sort of black pilled feeling of like, what am I supposed to do about this?
The system is rigged against me, right?
We had the case of Jeff Younger in Texas.
I don't know if you were following this, but his wife wants to make their son transgender.
And Jeff was like, absolutely not.
And it goes to court, and the judge is like, no, not only is this going to happen, Jeff, you're not allowed to talk about it.
And, you know, this is like, so as men, it's easy to understand why a lot of us, a lot of men would feel totally just silenced and feel a pretty great sense of oppression.
Right.
And, real quick, just to go back for a second, I completely agree.
And we'll keep moving with that because there's a lot to unpack.
But to play the devil's advocate for anybody who would counter, you know, with the earlier statistics that you just presented, you know, across the board, 70% of divorce is initiated by women.
And then when it comes to college educated women who are in marriage, That ends in divorce.
It's over 90% of the wife who initiated that divorce, not the husband.
One of the counters that I frequently have heard from people is they'll say, you know, because I'm aware of those statistics, and people say, well, the reason why women initiate divorce more than men is because men are physically stronger.
And so divorce, leaving, abandonment, physically retreating from the marriage is the only course of action that a woman has at her disposal.
Whereas the man doesn't feel as much of an urgency or a need to get out of the home and Get out of the marriage because he's physically superior to his wife.
He's not physically threatened.
And so, you know, the real reason why women are divorcing their husbands, you know, several times more than husbands are divorcing their wives is because there's domestic violence in the home, there's physical abuse, and that's always the guys.
So, we talked about this a little bit before we started recording.
Can you read the statistics on that, Eric?
Yeah.
And, and Joel, you're absolutely right.
There is domestic violence in the home.
Unfortunately, for the people who make that argument, so this is from one study.
It says that 70% of domestic violence in relationships is perpetrated by the women.
So, again, it's not like a, you know, 41 49 split here.
And the men, that's the other thing they found men are much less likely to go to the authorities or anybody else and say, yeah, my wife, my girlfriend, whatever, she's been beating me.
But 70%, Joel, that's high.
That's shameful.
Yeah, that's high.
So 70%.
So, this is the same statistic as divorce.
So, 70% of women across the board, whether the, you know, that's the average of college educated, non college educated, across the board, 70% of women in America who are married, who get divorced, 70% of them initiated that divorce.
And then when it comes to domestic violence, if there's domestic violence in a home, in a marriage between husband and wife, again, it's 70% of the women who initiated that violence.
And you and I have both, you know, talked about this and not with specific.
Specificity, not sharing events, you know, particular events, or certainly not sharing names.
But both of us over the years in pastoral ministry have dealt with couples within the church and not just within, you know, J.D. Greer's church, you know, but within, you know, true gospel preaching churches like yours and mine.
Dealing with Domestic Violence Cases00:03:03
We've dealt with married couples where it's the wife who is physically assaulting her husband.
And I've had to deal with those cases.
And it's really challenging to be just practically.
You know, telling the husband, you must get out.
You must physically, you have to run.
And when you run, here's another thing like, you can't push her because people don't understand how much stronger men are than women.
You cannot push her, even just to try.
Because I've dealt with cases where the husband has been cornered, physically cornered back into a bedroom in the home and she's blocking the door.
And then she's, you know, throwing things at him and beating and hitting him.
And it's like, you've got to get out of there.
But you can't push her because I've dealt with those cases too where I was just trying to leave and I pushed and she flew and hit the wall.
And dude, it's a nightmare having to pastor through those kinds of situations.
I'll just say it like this.
In my pastoral experience, which granted, I'm not 70 years old, I haven't been doing it for 50 years, but 10 years, give or take, in my decade of pastoral experience, I've never.
Actually, counseled a married couple where the husband hit his wife.
I have only counseled in all the domestic violence issues, which there have been a few.
It has always been the wife is physically hitting, I'm talking about closed fist, hitting her husband.
And the most that a husband has done is pushed her to try to get out of the way to run out of the house.
That's really interesting, Joel.
I've had.
I can think of a handful, right, of guys who were, yeah, there was legit, like, you know, domestic violence.
But I would say on the whole, my experience in 10 or so plus years, it's more than that now, but of pastoral counsel and that sort of thing, I would say it's much more common to see.
It just doesn't, it gets looked down on as, oh, that's not a big deal.
But it's like, again, wives who are throwing things, slapping, hitting, that sort of thing.
It happens surprisingly.
Number of times, I think for most people would be shocked to know how much that's happening.
But it's also interesting.
I was talking to a pastor who's in his 70s now, sort of at the retirement age, kind of seen it all across the last 30, 40 years in ministry.
And he said to me, he said, you know, it's weird because when like 35 years ago, he said it was almost always, it seemed like predominantly like kind of deadbeat guy, come on, get it together.
You know, and the ladies are like, you know, sweet ladies like standing by.
I'm kind of, you know, oversimplifying this.
But he said, you know, it's amazing in the last 10 years.
He said, How many times I'm dealing with women who are just like, you know what?
Total Depravity and Gender Roles00:09:36
I'm not emotionally fulfilled.
I'm leaving him.
And he said, it's interesting how many of the guys are like, he's a good guy.
Yeah, he's not, you know, a character from a Christmas prince on Netflix or something, but he's providing, he's meeting all the basic needs.
You know, he's taking the family to church, but it kind of goes to the, I think it was last year or the year before, you know, Adele, the singer, she leaves her husband and she goes on Oprah.
And Oprah's like, why did you leave your husband?
And she said, well, you know, I just wasn't 100% happy all the time.
And so I decided to leave him.
And Oprah said, You know what, honey?
That is such a powerful story for women today.
And I'm sitting there thinking, This is horrible advice.
I mean, shamefully arrogant, self centered.
Nobody is telling them the reality of that situation, right?
That you're destroying your own life, you're destroying your children's life, you're wrecking this guy's life because you weren't 100% happy.
Well, like, who's telling these people this stuff that you deserve to be 100% happy all the time?
Guarantee you, Adele's not 100% happy now after she left.
But again, yeah, I think that you're seeing this trend where it's like more and more in counseling.
Yeah, it's actually the women.
Because those sins haven't been dealt with.
And with that, just to give a theological disclaimer to the listener.
So when we think in terms of the doctrine of total depravity, people are totally depraved across the board.
If we were measuring statistics, it would be equal across the board.
We believe, you know, David doesn't just say, you know, in sin to my mother.
Give birth to me, but in sin did my mother conceive me.
And so, from conception, because of the fall, because of the fall of Adam and sin entering the world, every single human being, all of his posterity, has been born with a sin nature and conceived with a sin nature.
And so, when we speak of total depravity, distinguishing that for a moment from utter depravity, total depravity refers to sin at the level of the heart.
It's speaking of the inward man, meaning that all his inclinations, all his motives, and incentives, and thoughts, Are geared towards self and ultimately in rebellion against God.
Romans chapter 8 says the mind of the sinful man does not submit to God's law, nor can it.
And so it's unwilling and unable, apart from conversion.
And so all people are totally depraved.
So if we're speaking of man, our biblical anthropology, if we're speaking of man inwardly, at the inward level, the level of the heart, all men, and so that would include both men and women, are equally sinful internally.
At the level of the heart, apart from Christ, from conception, apart from conversion, all, both men and women, old men, young men, black men, white men, women, men, all across the board, every single human being is equally totally depraved, equally sinful at the internal level.
However, to apply an illustration to that, thinking about rearing children and parenting, every child is equally totally depraved apart from Christ.
But not every child is equally misbehaved in their outward actions.
Meaning that internal sin of total depravity does not necessarily outwardly manifest itself equally with each child.
There are better behaved children and there are worse behaved children.
And what makes the difference?
This is what I'm getting to.
What makes the difference is not nature, it's nurture.
If we speak of this at the nature level internally, well, every child is conceived totally depraved.
But not every child, that total depravity doesn't equally manifest.
Manifests itself through actions and deeds, behaviors, speech, words, attitude, all that varies.
There's massive disparities from child to child.
And all of that, the distinguishing factor for that is not nature, total depravity, but nurture, parenting.
Is the child disciplined in the way that the Bible says they should be disciplined?
Are they loved in the way that the Bible says they should be loved?
And so, my question is going back to, because I love the term that you coined the vintage, what was it, vintage sin or vintage what?
Yeah, vintage foolishness.
Yeah.
Vintage foolishness.
So, just for an individual person, if their sin is left unchecked, If a child is raised in a home where the parents are absent, it's a hands off, laissez faire approach.
There's no biblical discipline.
There's no correction offered.
They're allowed to do whatever they want.
They're always watching TV.
Every time they whine and complain, they get what they want.
They're never corrected.
Just at an individual level, that child is going to be a monster.
And not just at the heart level, because every person, again, apart from saving faith in Christ, apart from being given a new heart, we're all monsters at the level of the heart.
But that monstrous heart is going to be on full display.
Now, what happens if it's that vintage foolishness, if it's not just an individual child, but that child is not just five years of neglect, discipline, and correction, but it's 50 years.
And now they're a grown older adult, and not just one individual, but generationally, right?
What if there was one type of person that they weren't corrected and then they trained and society trained their?
Posterity not to be corrected, and theirs not to be.
What would that be?
That would be women.
They're called women.
That's what it is.
That is what we have done as men.
That's what the church has done.
So I'm not saying we're not responsible.
So my whole point is to say this we're Calvinists.
We understand the doctrine of total depravity.
We understand the doctrine of concupiscence.
We understand all these different things.
We are not saying that women are inherently more sinful than men.
What we are saying, though, is that in terms of outward manifestations of sinful behavior according to God's moral law, Women have been by and large less checked by the church for generations, and that has an effect.
Would you agree with that, Eric?
Yeah, completely.
And in fact, you can find this in books like Leon Podol's book, The Church Impotent, but for a long time, like centuries in the church, we've been teaching that women are actually, it's the opposite of what we're saying, that women are actually more holy.
Women are more prone to be spiritual.
That's the assumption.
And you can actually read this, and I've, Seen reformed pastors who kind of make statements where it's like, you know what, if there's sin, it's always the man's fault.
And I think you have to be really careful because we do want to say ultimately the man needs to take responsibility for his household.
But if you, for example, if you approach every counseling situation and you walk into it saying, I don't care what's going on in this house, it's ultimately his fault.
Well, I mean, that's going to color the way you do the counseling.
And I think what we actually need to be aware of is look, women have been told.
That they're more spiritual, they're more prone, like they have a nature that is not only the opposite of being more depraved, that they're more holy, right?
They've been kind of the spoiled kid, I think, culturally speaking, for a long time.
And so what's happened is they have that training.
Now, I think what is really cool is that when you get a healthy environment, when you get preaching that is like Paul's, like think about Paul, where he goes through the list of sins, you know, Ephesians 5 and 6, there's commands, there's, That are specific to the sex, meaning, you know, why do we have to tell fathers not to exasperate children?
Well, because fathers are prone to do that.
Why do you have to, you know, some people have said this.
Why is Paul only saying there's a direction for women to be modest?
Why isn't there a parallel passage for men to be modest?
Well, because that is a particularly feminine direction of sinning, right?
Women love to be lusted after.
Like, so Paul is being smart.
He's saying, look, these are the areas where you're prone to sin.
And it's the same way if, you know, I have three boys and I don't address them all 100% identically because I have to know the grain of each kid.
And so I think in our address to the people, we have to be the same way.
Now, today, I think, yeah, you're just going to have to be realistic and say, You know, women have not been preached hard yet.
And so we've got to, to some extent, we've got to correct that problem.
That doesn't mean that we don't like, we're going to stop addressing men's sins or anything like that.
We're still calling men to be leaders in their home and to take ultimate responsibility, yes.
But yeah, certainly to know the cultural milieu in which all that's happening.
Yeah, that's really good.
And I like what you said in terms of like, you know, Paul addressing one thing with women.
And then, you know, it's almost like, you know, a father addressing one thing with one of his kids.
You know, and you know, correcting one of them, and then that kid responds by saying, Well, you know, my brother, so why don't you talk to him?
You know, and my sister.
Well, it doesn't work that way.
We're right, this isn't this egalitarian, steamrolled, androgynous, you know, kind of like, no, God has baked disparities into the world, hierarchy into the world, differences, diversity, and diversity of thought, diversity of giftings, and diversity of propensities and vulnerabilities and weaknesses.
The Fruit of the Spirit is Not Genderless00:14:28
And that's been baked into the world that God made.
And that's with each individual person, but also between gender.
And so, even like with the fruit of the Spirit, I remember having people, several members of the church when I was pastoring in California, very angry at me because I was preaching on the fruit of the Spirit.
And I said that the fruit of the Spirit are not genderless.
And I said that the fruit of the Spirit is the manifestation of.
The spirit.
But the spirit, the third person of the Trinity, his characteristics, who he is, manifest differently through a man and through a woman.
And so, basically, what I was arguing is I was trying to say, you know, when Jesus braids a whip out of cords in John chapter 2 and starts beating people and throwing over the money changers' tables, Jesus is modeling for us perfectly self control and gentleness.
Yes.
Self control.
So, the first, the fruit of the Spirit, it's not like a toolbox where I'm going to take out one fruit at a time.
I'm going to take out a hammer for this portion of the project, then I'm going to put it back.
I'm going to grab a screwdriver.
So, right now, I'm exercising love, but self control is on the back burner.
It's not really in play.
That's not the way that, no, no, Jesus was full of the Spirit.
He fully embodied all of the Spirit, and therefore, all the fruits of the Spirit, all the characteristics of the Spirit were present in the life of Jesus.
At all times.
So that means there was never a moment where Jesus is not being loving.
There's never a moment that he's not being self controlled.
There's never a moment he's not being gentle, which means I say all that back to bring it back to gender and the distinctions of the fruit of the Spirit in terms of their expressions in men and women.
What that means is that apparently a man can, this would be some extenuating circumstances.
I'm not saying he can do it on a daily basis, but apparently it is possible for a man to make a whip.
And to start lashing it at people without breaching the fruit of the spirit that is self control.
I don't believe, this is my view, but I don't believe that a woman could ever do that.
I don't believe that there would be a scenario, right?
In self defense, that's different, but Jesus is, he's the aggressor, for lack of a better word, in this scenario, right?
I mean, the true aggressors are those who are defiling his father's house, but he's the one who makes it physical.
And my point is, I don't think there would ever be a scenario where a Christian woman in a godly manner could initiate, you know, I'm going to take a whip into this, you know, into this.
Den of thieves and start, you know, rounding up the tables because men and women are self-control looks different in women, yeah, than it looks in men.
So, all because that's one of the counters that I receive sometimes pastorally over the years is people say, Well, all nine of the fruit of the spirit, which first I wouldn't say it's an exhaustive list, but let's just go with that for a moment.
Um, all nine of the fruit of the spirit are given to Christians, period, whether it's a Christian man or a Christian woman.
So, both men and women are called to be, you know, self-controlled, both men and women are called to be gentle.
And then, what I would say is, I would go over to Peter, first Peter three, and say, Yeah, but.
But why do you think that this is then reiterated specifically for women, a quiet and gentle spirit?
Well, men are called to gentleness because they're called to the fruit of the spirit, and one of the fruit of the spirit is gentleness.
Correct.
Men are called to gentleness.
But quietness and gentleness being rooted together and being described as a chief characteristic of beauty for a woman is different than the gentleness that a man is called to aspire to.
And I think that's a difficult theological concept.
Concept for people to grasp, especially in modern church settings where we've just steamrolled it all together.
And so we look at the fruit of the Spirit and we say, it's not that there's no distinction whatsoever for how these are going to be expressed between men and women.
This is just the list.
And then we determine, and this list, if we're really going to be honest, this is more of a feminine list than it is a masculine list, meaning that the Spirit Himself, yeah, He is He, the Holy Spirit, but His qualities are really the qualities that are more naturally embodied by.
A woman.
So, really, what is the call to a Christian man?
It's to become more like a girl.
Yeah.
Yeah.
No, I completely agree.
And I think part of it is like, okay, even when in particularly like you see this in the Latin, but when you say man, right, vir, courage, it's the same word for courage.
So, when you're talking about masculinity and what it means to be a man, there's going to be certain traits that are pretty intrinsic.
This is why Joshua is being told repeatedly, like, have courage, act like a man, have courage, like on repeat.
You wouldn't hear necessarily the same things.
Said to a woman about what it means to be a woman, right?
Like you said, it's generally gentleness, quiet spirit.
And that's because of the marriage relationship and her relationship to her husband, which requires submission.
He's called to lead, which is more of in the bent of courage.
She's called to submit and to help, which is really more in the bent of gentleness and a soft spirit.
And I would take all this back to, though, right?
So we're talking about husbands and the difficulty in marriage counseling and stuff like that.
Fundamental question that a lot of people don't ask is, I was reading a book on modesty by Wendy Shallett.
It's a pretty interesting Jewish lady.
And she says in there, though, she's like, every time I see a woman being a whore, I always say to the girl, Where's your father?
Does your father know what's going on?
And people are like, Oh, you're one of those patriarchy people.
And she said, What's so bad about belonging to someone who loves you?
And it really struck me that the question we're not asking a lot of women is Where are their fathers?
Who is the father that sent them to college?
To live in a co ed dorm and to fornicate, and who let the mother give them the birth control pill on their way out the door.
Like, where is dad saying, put some clothes on?
You know, one of the first things that the father does, our father, after the fall into sin, is he sees fig leaves and he's like, no, no, no, you're going to go back upstairs and you're going to put more clothes on.
That is not acceptable.
We don't tolerate that.
There's rules and there's order.
Well, this is the stuff of fathers.
You know, and I've said to the guys in the church here quite a bit when Paul tells Titus, there's disorder, there's chaos.
And so, what do you do in Crete when you have disorder and chaos?
He said, I want you to create order by appointing elders.
What are elders?
They're the exemplary fathers in their community.
So, I've often said fathers are God's instrument for creating order in a world of chaos, right?
You are to rule the chaos.
You are to set boundaries for your girls just as much as your boys.
But I think, especially, we talk about how fatherlessness impacts men.
But I think so much of the feminism and the destruction of society that's been brought on by the female sex.
That too could just be traced back to where were the fathers?
That's good.
Well, so I feel thoroughly discouraged.
I've discouraged myself.
You've discouraged me.
We've discouraged each other.
And this is kind of right where you guys have left it with the King's Hall.
You've left us in the midst of discouragement, but I'd like to not do it here with Right Response Ministries.
So I'm going to ask you.
Cliffhanger.
Yes.
I'm going to ask you, you know what?
Delving into a million different things, what are just a couple of things that we could end on that would be hopeful?
What can we do?
What can we do about this?
Yeah, well, I think a lot of it is a lot of times when we go into analysis mode, which I'm prone to do quite a bit, the reason we have to realize why we're doing it.
And it's really like a diagnostic tool, right?
We want to know what's gone wrong so that we can fix it.
And I think that the other thing that I would tell people is there's kind of Two things that need to happen.
One is like, you know, people are like, yeah, the legal system needs to change.
I'm like, okay, well, unless you're going to go get a law degree and you're a millionaire and you're going to start funding some of these efforts, I'm not really sure what me personally, I am going to do about changing, you know, federal law.
It does need to be changed and we need legions of people who are working on that.
I think that it is very true that, you know, really lawyers, whether you like it or not, lawyers today are sort of like the front line.
That's where the war is being fought.
So certainly we need Christian men and You know, pushing forward that ball on the legal frontier.
That's absolutely true.
But I think for the average guy, I think about this for myself it's like, okay, again, Jordan Peterson, clean your room.
You know, you're worried about the legal structures, but you're rude to your wife.
You know, you're worried about the legal structures.
Well, start with yourself.
You know, start cultivating a gentle and quiet spirit.
There's so many people I found in the sort of like men going their own way, red pill, people that would even follow our stuff online.
It's like, okay.
You know, you're struggling, you got the marriage issues, you know, kids don't respect you, you're trying to figure this out.
Okay, so which elders do you submit to?
What are their names?
Where's your church?
Is it a healthy community?
Because honestly, Joel, if you don't have that, I'm not really sure how you're going to make progress as a Christian being sanctified in the word of God.
Because this is really what this comes down to people need regenerate hearts, they need to be consuming God's word day and night, they need to build their life on the rock, which again is the word of Christ, the law of Christ.
We need to be starting there.
And so I think a lot of it is just, it's very, very actually simple, but it's the difficult work of saying, well, you have to get your own life in order, right?
If you're a father, then you start just look at the biblical roles for what are you actually called to do?
And then you start walking those out, and you have men around you, including your pastors, who hold you accountable to it.
And yeah, so I think that's the simplest way that I know to outline that.
What do you do?
And it is hopeful because we've seen it.
I mean, I'm sure you could say the same about your church community.
We could say it about refuge.
I know you can go to Moscow and say the same thing because I've seen people repent, right?
We have pastors who will tell men who aren't working and their wives are like, you're being a loser.
You're supposed to be a provider.
What are you doing?
Go get a job.
And we've seen the fruit of it, and it is actually really good.
Yeah, all that is great.
Amen, a thousand times.
But let me press on you for just a second, Eric, and then I'll let you go.
We'll close.
You said, start obeying these commands.
We can't just start, you know, it's not just top down, right?
It's not yet.
Some of you may be called to be lawyers.
Some of you are going to run for civil office and these kinds of things, and that's good.
We need Christians in politics.
We need them in law.
We need all of Christ for all of life.
Yes, and amen, a million times, every square inch.
But for most of us, you're saying it starts at home, just obeying these commandments in your marriage with your children.
But then you said something particular, and I agree with you 100%.
But you said, none of that's really going to happen if you don't belong to a church.
Who are your elders?
Can you name them?
Who are you submitted to?
And here's the email that I get all the time, and I know you do too.
And so I want to hear from you because I'm still kind of making up my mind.
I'm not sure what to think.
Because on one hand, right?
So I'm a Calvinist and I'm a post millennial at the same time, which is sometimes those two things conflict.
One another.
You know, I'm a suspicious, you know, I'm suspiciously hopeful, you know, and so I'm not really sure, you know, it's like the two, I've got the post mill angel on one shoulder and Calvin on the other, and I'm not sure who to listen to right now, but I get emails from guys saying, Joel, I agree with you 100%.
I cannot, as God is my witness, I've been driving a two hour radius looking at churches for the last three years.
I cannot find one church that would agree with what you and Eric have just said.
If I went in there with my marriage and we were having problems immediately, Every single church I visited, it would all be my fault.
There would be no correction towards women.
None of that is in the preaching.
None of that is in the ethos.
None of that's in the community.
My wife, if I do go to church and I take my family to church, I risk my wife being further reinforced in feminism and turned by that church against me.
And I continue to hear people say that basically, like, the pickings are so slim out there when it comes to godly churches, especially on this issue.
That a lot of guys, it's not like even necessarily they've just given up.
There's plenty of losers who've given up and just black build and they're just, they're out, right?
And so I'm not talking, I'm in defense of the guys who haven't given up, who are actually still striving to be men, but they're like, I've got a better chance in leading my wife and protect.
I have to protect her not just from the godless culture, I have to protect her from churches.
And, you know, I've got guys moving to our church.
I know you guys do, you know, we've got guys coming from multiple people coming from Canada.
Who are now members in our church, you know, and then from other states, you know, from Georgia and from Michigan and, you know, and all these different things.
And of course, California and Oregon.
And they're coming, one, because they want to get out of, you know, godless totalitarian places like Canada and California and Oregon, you know, but they're also coming, you know, because they could, you know, they don't have to go to Georgetown, Texas, right?
There are a few other, you know, more conservative red state options that they could choose from, but they're going to Moscow, they're going to Ogden, they're going to Phoenix.
Durbin and James White, and they're going to Georgetown, Texas, north of Austin, with Covenant Bible Church, where I'm at.
And, like, that's it.
Like, I keep hearing for it, like that, you know, and I know there are a few others, or they're going to Foster, you know, Michael Foster or Dale, you know, but like, but it's, it's, I'm sure, you know, that's not an exhaustive list.
I'm sure we could come, but it would still be a short list if we listed every, you know, if we actually did the research.
And so, what do you say to that guy who's like, all right, like, yeah, I'm not going to change federal law and, you know, I'm not going to do this, I'm not going to do that, you know, it starts at home, starts with making my bed.
Starting Change at Home00:09:18
But you just said that one of the key factors in doing those things.
As a husband and as a father in my household, that's going to lend towards my long term success is being surrounded by this church community.
And where the heck do you find that?
Yeah, I mean, in some sense, it is a very difficult question.
And you do have to take into account generally in those conversations.
That's, you're right.
Probably the biggest one that we get is hey, here's my situation.
What do I do with my life?
And I wish we had time to answer all of them.
But I can't even respond to.
Yeah, I can't even do that.
But I think, bottom line for me, when you're faced with a tough decision, I always go back to core principles.
Okay, I know from scripture, I don't have to guess.
I don't have to like divine the will of God in Mark Driscoll fashion.
I don't have to do that.
I know what God says about church being participant in the body of Christ, having elders submitting to them.
I know and have seen in my life how important, how vital, how essential that is.
Like, if you want to live in a Christian, particularly.
As a Christian in a world that is hostile to you and to the church, then you have to have brothers and sisters who are not just Christians.
I mean, this is the thing.
Like, I think there are a lot of churches in America that are Christian, but not necessarily pushing the ball forward, not missionally aligned, not really forming much of a resistance.
Like, that's not, this isn't the time to be a part of that, I don't think.
So, and I think that's why so many people are moving.
And that's what a lot of this comes down to.
I've been in those situations too, where fundamentally I've said, look, we don't have that church.
We're in a community where I can't drive three hours to even find one.
Maybe it's not even in the same state as you.
And I basically came to the point where it's like, look, I do not want to live in Utah.
I do not like Utah.
I do not like a state that is run by Mormons.
I don't like the desert.
I don't like the price of housing.
And you go to many of our areas where there's good churches.
Texas is probably a little different, but Moscow, Ogden, not cheap places to live.
And I remember wrestling through this.
And finally, I just said, look, here's the deal.
You want to see your generations raised up in faithfulness to the Lord?
Well, I can't just give in to the status quo.
And I think this is for men, especially.
This is the part about what does it mean to be a hero?
Well, first of all, not everyone is one.
And so to act heroically and courageously and to be a man, you're going to have to do really hard things sometimes.
And you're going to have to make sacrifices.
And Joel, I guess the thing I don't get with a lot of men is they're like, well, yeah, but my business and my this and my that.
And I'm like, okay, well, what are your kids' souls worth to you?
Right.
What about your wife?
What's the difference?
What's the difference between a wife who is in a community that she can flourish versus a community that she is continually crippled by anxiety and bitterness and not being fed by the word of God?
Well, it's a big difference.
And I mean, you look at the gospel commands.
What did Jesus say?
Like, it's almost cliche because we've heard it so many times.
You know, come and follow me.
And people are like, no, I got a house, I got to attend.
I got my, you know, my parents.
I got the thing.
And I'm not saying businesses and houses and parents aren't a very real consideration, but I feel like in this moment, the stakes are so high that for me in my house, it was like, yeah, we're burning the boats.
Right.
Well, we may go down swinging, but we're going to give it our best effort.
We're not going to sit on our hands and we're not going to watch our family just deteriorate spiritually and just say, well, hopefully, against all my foolishness, God just makes it work out.
Yeah, that's a great answer.
That's super helpful.
Yeah, I think, I don't think there's any way around it.
I think that's the honest answer.
The honest answer is yeah, you're probably going to have to move and it's going to be hard and it's going to require sacrifice.
And at the end of the day, like what you're measuring, because you and I, like we're not pietists, we believe in business, we believe in all, you know, vocation and all those things matter.
They matter immensely.
But what we're talking about right now is we're not talking about pietism.
We're talking about economics and markets and vocation and all these things that mattered in land.
Maybe you own land in a certain place where it's been in your family.
You know what I mean?
We're talking about things that matter.
And we're not the kind of guys theologically that would cast shade and say those things don't matter.
We're not poverty gospel John Piper guys.
So we're saying we see the weight and the worth of that.
But we're weighing it currently right now against the weight of your kids' souls, the weight of your marriage, your wife, whether she's going to stay with you or leave you because she's being lobotomized and indoctrinated by feminists.
So we're pro own land, own guns, own multiple properties over time, build wealth, multiple different, you know, a man who casts his bread seven times in the water, diversify, getting all these things, vocation, work hard, leave a legacy, a dynasty.
Don't be like the Hobby Lobby guy and give it to charity.
That's stupid.
Don't hate your children.
Give it to them.
Don't have a bumper sticker that says, I'm spending my children's inheritance.
That's wicked.
God hates that.
So we are not the overtly spiritual, pietistic, just give to global missions.
We're saying all that matters.
And we would give all that up for the soul.
We're talking about the soul and not just our soul, but the souls of our children.
And so if that's the situation you're in, then yeah, men do hard things.
They start another business.
They.
Scrape by for a while.
You know, they hustle, they do whatever it takes.
And so I really appreciate that you gave that answer because I think that's the real answer.
That's the honest answer.
There is no, I keep trying to give people another answer, but I'm just like, I think that's the answer.
Some of these guys, a lot of these guys are literally, they're just going to have to move.
They're going to have to move.
Yeah.
And a lot of them too, Joel.
I'm sure you're aware a lot of these situations, I'll hear from the same guys over like three years and they just remain in the same condition.
And yeah, it is hard.
For a lot of people, there's no easy answer.
But again, yeah, that priority of spiritual health of your family has to be at the top of the list.
Amen.
Well, this has been super helpful.
I won't keep you any longer, but I just want to say thanks for coming on the show.
Tell our listeners one more time.
You know, we kind of said it in the beginning, but one more time, what are some of the projects you're involved in, how they can be following you, and how they can help support you and the Ogden Boys, your ministry?
Yeah, absolutely.
So I am the CEO of New Christendom Press.
That is my full time.
Venture these days, and we've got a number of things under that banner, which include the Brighthearth podcast with Brian and Lexi Sauvay.
We've got the Hardman podcast, and then, of course, the King's Hall podcast.
People can definitely follow along, support us on Patreon on all those channels.
And we're kind of everywhere with that.
But yeah, if you go to kingshall.com or newchristendompress or ericcon.com, you can find any one of us and kind of follow along.
Great.
All right, Eric, thanks for coming on the show.
I appreciate it, man.
Awesome.
Thanks, Joel.
I appreciate it, brother.
Can I be frank with you for just a second right here at the end?
Look, some of you guys, you're financially supporting this ministry.
And from the bottom of my heart, I say thank you.
I cannot thank you enough.
However, some of you, you just can't afford it.
In fact, some of you, you shouldn't afford it.
Let's be honest.
I mean, we're living in Joe Biden's ridiculous economy.
Our nation and our totalitarian political elites lost their minds over the last three years due to COVID.
We have written checks that we simply cannot cash.
It doesn't matter if people change the definition of a recession.
We are living in a recession right now, regardless.
Some of you are struggling to afford a carton of eggs at the grocery store.
You cannot support financially this ministry at this time, nor should you, but you could still help us tremendously.
I am asking you, please, if you're willing to do so, take one minute of your time.
Leave us a five star review on your favorite podcast platform iTunes, Spotify, whatever that might be.
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