BEN STUART | Life & Love in the Modern Age (Ep. 728)

0:00 This is Undaunted Life, a man's podcast.

0:24 I'm your host Kyle Thompson, let's get into it.

0:26 All right, guys, we've got a special return guest on the podcast today.

0:29 His name is Ben Stewart.

0:30 So he is a pastor and an author.

0:32 He's the pastor of Passion City Church in Washington, D.C.

0:35 And prior to joining Passion City Church, he served as the executive director of Breakaway

0:40 Ministries on the campus of Texas A&M.

0:42 He earned his master's degree in historical theology from Dallas Theological Seminary,

0:46 just like my pastor, Mark Hitchcock.

0:48 And also more importantly than that, we got to hang out at Saturated last year.

0:51 So he was one of the pastors that went down to Church of 11, 22 and talked during Saturated.

0:55 So we did that little round table discussion.

0:57 So if you recognize his name, that's probably from there.

1:00 So in addition to all of that, we had a great conversation today.

1:03 So today we talked about a lot of things.

1:05 We talked about what it's like doing ministry in Washington, D.C.

1:09 What are some of the struggles?

1:10 He had some really interesting insights about what it's like doing ministry there in D.C.

1:13 versus some other places, him being from Texas and whatnot.

1:17 And then also we talked about some of the draws, okay?

1:19 So for someone like that, you're in this city and you're trying to gain power and what

1:24 does that look like?

1:25 And for him as a pastor, it's like monies, honeys and heresy, like you're going to be

1:28 pulled in all those different directions.

1:30 So how do you stay away from that?

1:32 But then also we talked about his new book, which is right here, Single Dating Engaged

1:35 Married.

1:36 This is actually a re-release of a book that he did a while ago that did well.

1:39 He just updated some stuff in there.

1:41 But we just talk about, okay, why this book, why an updated edition?

1:45 What is it about singleness and dating that is so hard for people to navigate?

1:49 You know, what does it mean to be called a singleness when it comes to dating?

1:52 It's not really described in the Bible.

1:53 So how do we look at that?

1:55 How do we put God first when we're single dating, engaged, married?

1:59 Like how exactly do we do that?

2:00 But then specifically we go in and talk more about divorce and how a lot of guys specifically

2:06 are very fearful of potentially getting divorced.

2:08 We talk about purity culture because some people saw this book when it was initially released.

2:12 That's kind of like an answer to purity culture and these people that claim to have been hurt

2:16 by the whole process.

2:17 So we get into that.

2:18 We talk about porn.

2:19 We talk about sex and the different things that go into that.

2:22 We talk about guys that are stuck in like sexless marriages, like what's going on?

2:25 What would he tell the guys like that?

2:27 We talked about what it looks like when you're combining families during an engagement process

2:31 and just really overall and even back to the beginning, we talked about man friendly churches

2:36 and masculinity inside the church and what is biblical masculinity?

2:39 I really, really enjoyed my time with him.

2:40 I'm glad he was able to come back on the show.

2:42 So guys, I'm not going to keep him from you any longer.

2:43 So without further ado, let's get into it.

2:47 Ben Stewart, welcome back to Undaunted Life of Man's podcast.

2:50 Although this time it's virtual the first time we were actually in the same room.

2:53 Yeah, that's right.

2:54 Yeah, I didn't think of that as welcome back, but you're right.

2:56 Yeah.

2:57 Yeah.

2:58 But yeah, I guess that leads to I guess the very first question, which is I kind of talked

3:02 about this with Derwin because I had him for a virtual interview not that long ago.

3:06 We have terrible taste in friends like Joby Martin of all people.

3:11 I mean, my goodness, he invites us down to Florida and then he makes us get in a room

3:15 and he forces us to talk to each other like, what's wrong with that guy?

3:18 It's hard.

3:19 It's just ministry.

3:20 Just trying to love a guy.

3:21 Yeah.

3:22 I mean, we got to love God, love people at the end of the day, even people like Joby.

3:26 But no, here I will give you an opportunity to give a compliment to the man that introduced

3:29 us.

3:30 Hey, man, I love Joby quite a bit.

3:32 And you know what's fun is I brought him up here to DC and he just crushed.

3:38 It was so great, you know, and he was like, Hey, how do you think like people will engage

3:42 with me in DC?

3:43 I was like, man, half of them are from the south.

3:45 You're going to sound like home.

3:46 I said, half of them from the north, you're going to be like a novelty like seeing something

3:50 at the zoo.

3:51 Like you're going to be a fascinating thing.

3:53 Did you wear flannel?

3:54 Because that would have made it even better.

3:55 He would have been definitely a southern zoo animal at that point.

3:57 But I truly love that man.

3:59 I mean, he's a he's a recent friend and a dear one.

4:02 I love him.

4:03 So grateful to know him.

4:04 And it was very down there.

4:05 Fun to meet you.

4:06 It's cool.

4:07 I like going down there.

4:08 Man, saturated was was something else.

4:10 I mean, you walk into different places and I mean, with you being with passion, obviously

4:14 the big conferences and you can kind of you've been in some of those positions before, but

4:18 I just remember the first night because you wrapped up saturated.

4:20 You were the last preacher, right?

4:22 And I mean, you had Jim Bergen before that.

4:24 Yeah, Durwin Gray and like you just in Matt Chandler and you just had these these giants.

4:28 I remember the first night after Jim Bergen got done and you know, they opened up the

4:31 altar and like, I remember Joby going back up on stage basically to close the night out

4:35 and he's got the microphone.

4:36 He's like, he's like, hold his chest.

4:38 He's like, and he just kind of says it.

4:39 You know, he's like, I can barely breathe.

4:41 And it felt that way.

4:43 I mean, so like it just seems like there's something in the water down there, but you

4:46 actually brought up something that I that I want to talk about because you do ministry

4:49 in DC.

4:50 And so you're like, you know, I don't mean this in a bad way, but you're like a secondary

4:55 church of a main church.

4:56 So you're like, you know, like your own location, but you're in DC, which is like the belly of

5:01 the beast in a lot of ways.

5:02 You have a lot of a transient community.

5:04 You have a lot of people that just moved out of there because of the previous administration

5:08 and you got a lot of people that are being invited to leave because, you know, Trump is

5:12 trying to signal that we're going to be bringing down the size of the federal government and

5:15 all that.

5:16 But, you know, it's it can be a rather depraved feeling place like it doesn't like it feels

5:21 very patriotic when you're there, but then when you start kind of pulling back the layers

5:24 of some of the stuff that happens in that city, it's kind of the nasty part of how the sausage

5:28 is made.

5:29 So I guess talk to me about some of the struggles about kind of being a secondary planted church

5:33 of a main brand, but also just operating in DC.

5:36 Yeah, man.

5:37 I mean, Louie's been awesome, you know, I, I let a college ministry for a decade plus.

5:43 And Louie said, Hey, I want to launch a passion city church in a, in a culture shaping city.

5:48 I said, what does that look like?

5:49 He said, I don't know.

5:50 I said, what city?

5:51 He goes, I don't know.

5:52 You got to live there.

5:53 So just this real freedom of, you know, so we're not a traditional multi site in a sense.

5:57 We're closer to like a, like a plant, but, but we've stayed connected like family, which

6:01 has been great.

6:03 And you know, if people were betting it was on Texas, I'm a Texan, that's kind of where

6:07 we thought we'd go.

6:08 But when we showed up in DC, we were praying, visiting different cities.

6:11 I mean, you show up here.

6:12 And I think I think a lot of people don't realize we didn't, man, we would be sitting

6:16 at restaurants.

6:17 My wife and I were like, we're the youngest or we're the oldest people here by far.

6:21 And I talked to a senator and I said, how many staff do you have?

6:23 And he said 120.

6:24 I said, how many are under 30?

6:26 He said all of them.

6:27 Geez.

6:28 And so you start doing the math and you go, this is a very young town, educated, motivated

6:33 young people from all over the world.

6:36 And it's been a passion of mine for years to dwell in that kind of tribe, that kind of

6:40 people.

6:41 And you realize a lot of them are moving here and they might be in politics, but a lot of

6:44 them are just in government.

6:45 They're in an agency, they're in the military, they're dependent on just over there.

6:49 And so it's just this city teaming with young people, but not necessarily teaming with churches.

6:55 There's some good ones, but not at the volume of other towns.

6:59 And so we thought, man, this is going to be wild.

7:00 I'm not a particularly political person, but this is worth failing at to come in here

7:04 and reach these young influential, educated, motivated people.

7:07 And, you know, man, God's on the move.

7:09 You go down to Florida and it's a different crowd.

7:11 I told you, I love it.

7:12 There's way more tattoos down here.

7:14 People in DC get like tasteful ones you can hide under your sea, but, you know, but God's

7:20 on the move, man.

7:21 Yeah.

7:22 I saw that.

7:23 That looks nice, bro.

7:24 But the church is growing.

7:25 It's thriving.

7:26 God's on the move in DC in ways that I love when people visit and they're like, this is

7:29 not what I expected.

7:30 I didn't expect this.

7:32 And it's powerful.

7:33 A lot of people come to Christ.

7:34 You know, they came up here looking for power to fill a vacancy and it's not doing it.

7:39 I'll tell you this.

7:41 When I first moved up here, I met with a guy who worked at a media outlet up here and I

7:45 said, man, tell me about DC.

7:47 They just blank question.

7:48 Tell me about it.

7:49 And he said, it's filled with young men with father wounds desperately trying to succeed

7:53 to prove to somebody or themselves that they're worthy of love.

7:56 And I was like, dang, I thought you didn't tell me like coffee shops or something.

7:59 But he's like, that's, and so I love speaking to, you know, we got men and women, but I just

8:06 love speaking into that.

8:07 Hey, there's a bigger thing to live for.

8:09 These are people who want to live on purpose and there's a bigger purpose to live for,

8:12 you know?

8:13 Okay.

8:14 You brought up a couple of things there that I think are important.

8:15 You said that I forget exactly how you're worried, but you're not very political.

8:18 You're not like an overtly political person.

8:20 Obviously, in the season that we just got out of been, you had a lot of pastors that were

8:24 trying to seem centrist and it was like they just came off sounding feckless and worthless.

8:29 And then you had people that went very overtly political, which is a little bit weird as

8:34 well.

8:35 But the thing is, is like we can't just ignore politics because it's one of those things

8:41 where it's like, if, if Jesus is Lord overall, that includes politics, politics isn't that

8:46 one area that, oh, that's the third rail.

8:48 We can't touch that.

8:49 And so you don't seem like a political creature though, but how do you strike that cord of,

8:55 okay, I'm a pastor and Sunday mornings is for the proclaiming and the good news of the

8:59 gospel and the, you know, exegesis of the word, right?

9:03 And given people like, Hey, let's expose it and say what this stuff means.

9:07 But at the same time, we have to apply it.

9:09 And I use this example quite a bit.

9:11 So my pastor, Mark Hitchcock, a faith Bible church in Edmond, Oklahoma, a Dallas theological

9:16 seminary professor, like, you know, solid dude theologically, we just go verse by verse

9:20 by verse through the Bible.

9:21 I remember a couple of years ago is the midterms, this would have been what 2022 on Sunday.

9:26 He's like, Hey, on Tuesday, remember, vote biblical values.

9:30 And then he just went into a sermon and I remember going, Hey, wait, whoa, wait a minute, some

9:34 idiots think that vote biblical values mean voting the person that's going to allow children

9:39 to quote unquote, choose their gender and chop off their healthy breast tissue or their

9:43 penis.

9:44 And also vote biblical values might be like, Hey, you know what, abortion's kind of, it's

9:49 a nuanced issue.

9:50 There's a lot of gray areas.

9:51 And so let's allow people to slaughter their babies in certain circumstances, but not all

9:54 of them because words are some such.

9:57 So how do you thread that needle, Ben?

9:59 Yeah, you know, it's interesting how politics has become so all consuming.

10:04 You know, we can get into that in America of just the, um, how it's replaced religion

10:09 for so many people in terms of where their interests lie and their thoughts lie.

10:12 So you back it up to eight years ago, when I moved here, it wasn't even eight years ago

10:17 as central in the conversation as it became certainly during COVID and all that.

10:21 So when I moved up here, my motive wasn't I want to change politics.

10:26 My vote of was I'm here to reach people with the gospel of Jesus Christ.

10:29 When I got into this town, what was interesting to me, man, is I realized like when we started

10:37 doing these groups, I was taking them to the gospel of Mark and I had guys come to me and

10:40 say, man, so many pastors up here, their sermons just become political, which is like, if I'm

10:47 a your B, we're just, we're both talking about C. We're talking about some politician and

10:52 he goes, but they're reading the news, which is partially true at best.

10:58 He said, so I'll show up in a sermon and this guy is railing on because based on what he

11:02 read the news.

11:03 And he's like, man, he doesn't quite have all the data on that.

11:05 He's not quite accurate on that.

11:06 And they're like, it's just, but no one challenges us on how are you doing?

11:10 What are you doing?

11:11 And I realized the way I can be the most influential up here politically is to go hard

11:16 at these people in my church with the gospel of Jesus Christ that is going to change them

11:20 from the inside out.

11:23 And I'm going to speak with authority and power and the thing I know really well, which

11:26 is this book.

11:27 And then when I sit with them, I tell people it's been interesting being up here because

11:31 it's kind of the difference between like certainly during the election, people were like, man,

11:35 if our political discourse is like in a 10 in terms of aggression in my town, it must

11:39 be like in a 20 in your town.

11:41 I'm like, not really, I said, you know, like in my town, they're like pro athletes, you

11:49 know, pro athletes are trying to beat the other team.

11:52 They're playing the game, but it's the fans and the crowd that are yelling, rip his hat

11:56 off.

11:57 You know, and kind of like, so I'm like, you're getting the media, rip his hat off here.

12:00 They know it's a game that so much of how the media works as a game, politics is a game.

12:06 And so it's interesting for me watching some of them play it.

12:08 I come to a lot of the political conversations as a learner going to explain that to me.

12:13 Help me understand that.

12:14 Help me understand where you're coming from that.

12:15 And then I know for me, if I can get it on the person of Jesus, I want to see you change

12:20 from the inside out.

12:21 So I'm not scared of politics, move to this town, but the temptation here is to suddenly

12:25 make every sermon about that and never get to their heart.

12:30 But it's funny.

12:31 I had a friend ask me that.

12:32 He's like, are you going to pass out voting guides?

12:33 He was in a different town.

12:34 And I was like, I understand why you're asking that because that really matters.

12:38 I said, but in this town, no one's wondering if they're going to vote.

12:42 Yeah.

12:43 Right.

12:44 I was like, that's not even a question they're asking, but a lot of them are showing up at

12:49 our doors that don't know anything about Jesus or the Bible.

12:52 And I'm getting to challenge their worldview in a profound way that has political implications.

12:57 So well, and that's kind of what we do on the show.

13:00 I tell people all the time, like, Hey, you know, in a nutshell, what's your show?

13:02 I was like, we cover faith culture and politics, not necessarily in that order and not like,

13:06 you know, evenly distributed a third, a third, a third.

13:09 Sometimes there are times where it's warranted to spend the entire time political, the entire

13:13 time cultural or there's always the faith element that runs through, even if it's not

13:17 the over point of that episode.

13:19 But it's interesting to hear your approach to that because of what you also said about

13:23 what that guy told you about what you have all these dudes walking around with father

13:26 wounds that are trying to prove something, right?

13:28 They're trying to stick their chest out and peacock and like accomplish something and maybe

13:32 that comes through influence, through power, through any of the other things that are the

13:36 temptations of this world, which that kind of gets into my area, Ben, because I was put

13:40 on this planet to equip men to push back darkness.

13:42 And for years, I would get asked by pastors and just people at churches like, Hey, you

13:47 know, we want to start a men's ministry or Hey, we want to do men's ministry.

13:51 We want to do it better.

13:52 We want to do all that.

13:53 But what they meant was is we want you to tell us what content to give to our guys that

13:57 we forced to get into a room at six AM on Saturdays and circle up like women do in chat,

14:02 right?

14:03 And so it's like, this isn't men's ministry.

14:04 This is women's ministry that's been repackaged for men.

14:06 So I don't even talk about men's ministry anymore.

14:09 I talk about man friendly churches.

14:12 It's your church man friendly because they have a blinking neon sign outside or amaze

14:16 well have that says men, we don't have you in mind.

14:19 We are going to be singing songs that are not in a key that you can sing that has homo

14:23 erotic lyrics and the in the pastor is like the least manly, most frumpy doe do that you've

14:28 ever seen in your life.

14:29 And you're like, I think I'll go to the shooting range as opposed to hang out with

14:32 the hanging out with these doe boys.

14:33 And so it's like part of how you get at the father wound that you see in your city bin

14:38 is that you model the manliness, the totality of manliness, not just beef jerky and dirt

14:44 and blood on your boots, but the entire panoply of manliness that we see in Jesus Christ.

14:50 So how is it that modern pastors can do that your, you know, your congregation included?

14:56 Yeah, that's a great question, man.

14:58 You know, I wrestled with for years, um, what does a man do?

15:04 You know, like how do you talk about manliness that doesn't skew into caricature?

15:09 And what, what really got me with that was looking at guys that are like, okay, if I,

15:13 if I make manliness like primarily physical in its nature, what about the guy who's got

15:19 severe physical limitations, like a good buddy of mine, you know, I go, am I telling him

15:23 he will never ascend to the, the role of man?

15:26 So I realize as a pastor, if I'm going to preach on what a man is, what's something that can

15:30 accommodate that guy, that guy that, you know, was, was injured in warfare and can't do some

15:35 of these things that we, you know, how do you define manliness to him?

15:38 And it was profound for me, man, to get into Genesis and see, uh, we're meant to be, we're

15:44 made in the image of God.

15:45 And what did God do?

15:47 The world was, uh, at the Genesis chapter one, right?

15:50 There was, um, uh, the word, world was formless and void and there was darkness over the deep,

15:56 you know, formless, there's no structure and void, there was no life.

16:01 And so God exerts his will on chaos.

16:04 And in the first three days, he built structure, sea air and land, right?

16:08 The teleological support structures for life.

16:10 And then in the next three days, he fills them each and you go, God built a structure

16:15 for the sake of flourishing of life.

16:17 And then he tells the man do that, cultivate and keep it, keep means protect, keep out

16:23 which would, that, which would harm life and cultivate, create an environment where the

16:27 life under your influence can flourish.

16:29 Right?

16:30 That's what a man does.

16:31 And so there is a physical element for men to do that.

16:34 We got to keep, we got to push back the dark.

16:35 We got to push back dangerous things, but you also got to create an environment where your

16:40 wife can flourish, your children can flourish, you know, your business can flourish, anyone

16:43 under your influence can flourish.

16:45 And so I hit that message hard about men, what we're meant to do in terms of cultivating

16:50 and keeping this is what Jesus did.

16:52 I'm going to die.

16:54 Why?

16:55 To make war on the devil and to make my bride pristine, right?

17:00 To cultivating keep.

17:01 And so hammering that message home to men and speaking to men, then they know you're talking

17:07 to me and it resonates with the soul of men men are made to do that.

17:10 They resonate with that deeply.

17:12 Yeah.

17:13 And I'm going to keep, I'm meant to do that.

17:15 And when they understand that and understand, we're going to value that and keep speaking

17:18 to that, I think they show up and, you know, in my town, it's cool because, I mean, being

17:24 a portable church helps with that too, because you kind of get baked in like, Hey, we need

17:28 some dudes to pick up stuff and move it and carry it.

17:30 And you know, you men tend to build bond over shared experience.

17:34 And so we have a lot of shared experience that men do from like setting up programming

17:38 and all that kind of stuff to the mall mall, bunch of dudes go work out on the national

17:43 mall once a month.

17:44 And we just have different places where men can fit in and you go, this makes sense to

17:47 you.

17:48 We're not going to make you sit in a circle and just talk about your feelings.

17:52 Hey guys, real quick, as you've heard me describe before, I am incredibly conservative about

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19:26 Yeah.

19:27 And that's kind of the thing is men default to connecting shoulder to shoulder before they

19:32 connect eyeball to eyeball and women default to connecting eyeball to eyeball and really

19:36 could care less about accomplishing things shoulder to shoulder.

19:39 And so giving your men opportunities to do things, but also just service.

19:43 Okay.

19:44 So I'm with you.

19:45 Like dude, I'm in really good shape.

19:46 I take fitness very seriously.

19:47 If people come train with me like it's an experience, right?

19:51 Well, we'll put it that way.

19:52 But like I don't put the value of my manhood in the number of pull ups that I can do or

19:57 how fast I can run a mile.

19:59 Like I put it in the person and work of Jesus Christ, but also we were given one body and

20:03 we were to steward it well.

20:05 And so if you're physically capable, I am to call you up to something as a man to say,

20:09 no, being in the state that you are in right now physically is not acceptable.

20:13 What if God needs you and needs your body to in order to do his work and you're not

20:17 ready for the task?

20:18 It's like a Nehemiah like the it wasn't like, all right, we're going to rebuild the city

20:22 walls and defend them, but hey, we're going to spend 90 days getting everybody in shape

20:26 to make sure that we can carry everything to make sure nobody gets sore as they're swinging

20:29 their swords or spears around like it was like, no, like we're ready.

20:32 We got to be ready right now.

20:33 And that's what resilience gets into.

20:35 But before our discussion, I guess there's this idea and I get invited to come on places

20:39 all the time to talk about biblical masculinity.

20:42 Yeah.

20:43 And what these people typically want are examples of manly dudes from the Bible, but they miss

20:47 out on some of the structural elements of what a man even is.

20:49 And so we default to what you're talking about earlier, caricature.

20:53 So it's big muscles, big trucks, dirt, killing animals and all that stuff, which as Joby

20:58 would say, those things don't make you a man.

20:59 They make you awesome.

21:00 They don't make you a man.

21:02 And so with that in mind, I'm also aware of the guys that are a little bit more, you

21:07 know, shall we say a motive and their personalities, they're drawn to poetry and classical music

21:13 and, you know, cooking and artesian this and that.

21:16 And I'm like, great, I don't care what you're into.

21:18 I care if you cultivate spiritual, mental and physical resilience on a daily basis.

21:22 And if you love God and love your neighbor, like that's what I care about.

21:25 That's what makes you a man, but let's just, you know, talk a little bit about biblical

21:29 masculinity and the elements they're in.

21:31 Yeah.

21:32 I think you're right.

21:33 I think for a man, they walk into any space and go, God has put me here with a clear call

21:38 from Genesis is my creation mandate, whatever I have influence over, I want to create an

21:43 environment, a structure where life can flourish.

21:47 And so I want to do that.

21:48 If I run a kitchen, I'm going to create one where the people under my care are going to

21:52 make the best food possible and they're going to maximize their gifts under God.

21:56 If I'm a husband, I'm going to create an environment, not where I give my wife everything she wants,

22:01 but in an environment that's conducive for her growth as a woman under God, because that's

22:05 what Jesus did.

22:06 Right?

22:07 Yeah.

22:08 He sacrificed and provided for his bride.

22:09 That's what we do.

22:10 And it's interesting, man.

22:11 There's a book you'd love called Manhood in the Making.

22:13 You ever read that?

22:14 Huh?

22:15 No.

22:16 Manhood in the Making.

22:17 It's not a Christian book.

22:18 It's an anthropology book.

22:19 And so the guy doesn't even have like some point he's trying to make.

22:21 He's just studying cultures and his thesis is why are there rituals to make you a man

22:28 and women don't have them?

22:29 Oh, yeah.

22:30 Yeah.

22:31 That's an old book.

22:32 Yeah.

22:33 Yeah.

22:34 Oh, David Gilmore.

22:35 But it's awesome to see like he was like, you know, you just get down to a tribal experience

22:39 and you go, the women are caring for the babies.

22:43 This guy has to go get protein.

22:45 So we live.

22:46 Right?

22:47 And so then you start backtracking these characteristics.

22:48 So he's got to have courage because he's got to walk out into that jungle.

22:51 He's got to have a skill set that's crafted and learned.

22:54 So he's got to have some character of courage.

22:56 He's got to be able to develop a skill set.

22:59 But then if that man fails to share the kill, you're not a man because you're selfish and

23:07 men.

23:08 And you won't be a leader for long.

23:09 Yeah.

23:10 You sacrifice and risk what for the sake of the tribe so that life can flourish and it

23:13 gets twisted.

23:14 So when you read Manhood in the Making like some of it gets twisted like and the way you

23:17 get protein is you steal it from others and murder them.

23:20 You're like, okay, that's where sin is distorted humanity, but you see like those echoes from

23:25 creation run deep in us and you've got guys, I mean, I see them up here.

23:31 They are courageously making decisions to help America, their office someplace, a structure

23:37 where good can flourish and they may not be a big dude.

23:42 They may be 140 pounds, but they're a hero because they're courageously doing good and

23:46 cultivating.

23:47 Right, and I know plenty of dudes with neck tattoos that are bad dads, it's like they

23:51 might be able to win a street fight, but they don't take care of their kids.

23:54 Like, I know because, you know, I do jujitsu and so I think of things in terms of belts

23:58 like, okay, you know, cause y'all say all the times like, Oh man, I may be a brown belt

24:02 in jujitsu, but I'm a white belt and that's like whatever that is, and you have so many

24:06 guys that are pursuing being a bad dude that can fight when it comes to actual physical

24:11 conflict.

24:12 But when it comes to emotional conflict, like with one of their kids or with their spouse,

24:15 they're tapping out, they're a white belt, right?

24:17 And it's like, Hey, brother, there's a massive inequity here.

24:20 And the same thing is true and I have to check myself sometimes because I look at the number

24:24 of hours spent working on my fitness of my body as opposed to the fitness of my soul.

24:30 And I tell guys all the time, like, Hey, if you want to be a prepper and you've got,

24:33 you know, your solar panels and you got barbed wire around the edges of your property and

24:36 you got, you know, cans of water spread out all over the place, I'm for that.

24:40 But guess what?

24:41 You're going to die someday and all you've done is gather up all that material for some

24:45 other chimp.

24:46 Right?

24:47 And so it's like, if we're only worried about this world, that's only going to get us so

24:49 far.

24:50 We're prepped for this one, but not the next one.

24:52 And again, there's a major inequity there.

24:54 But one thing that this kind of all kind of points to, you know, doing ministry in DC,

24:59 dealing with all these men that have all these father wounds and a myriad of other issues,

25:03 it leads into problems for you as well.

25:06 Because we've seen, and you know, I remember Matt Chandler at the x-way nine conference

25:10 talking about, you know, someone challenged him to write the names of the men in his life,

25:15 like write them on the inside of his Bible that have disqualified themselves from ministry,

25:18 right?

25:19 Joby talks about it all the time.

25:21 Money's and honey's gets lots of pastors, but I'll add one heresy, right?

25:25 So money's, honey's and heresy.

25:26 So you got dorks like Rick Warren posting things online or, you know, Russell Moore,

25:30 any of these pastors you're not allowed to talk about, lest you be divisive.

25:33 But you have these people that are proclaiming things that are a biblical, but they are very

25:38 political and they are very nice messages that sound good and they sound winsome.

25:42 But they are, they're needlessly feckless and worthless and vapid.

25:47 There's just nothing there to them and they certainly don't point to a biblical gospel

25:51 centered ethic.

25:52 And so for you, I could see how that would be an easy pull to where it's like, you're

25:56 in the epicenter of monies and honey's, right?

26:00 And their influence on the power structure of the most powerful country in the history

26:04 of the world and then also it could be very tempting for you to be like, ah, you know,

26:08 let's, let's just ignore those parts of the Bible that seem real icky and offensive.

26:13 Let's just go to the love stuff.

26:14 Let's talk about Jesus the hippie and not Jesus the lamb of God.

26:18 So how do you personally been batten down the hatchets and say, no, I'm going to be

26:24 a man about the book.

26:25 And if you're offended by the gospel, that's fine.

26:28 I'm not going to be offensive in my presentation, but let's let the gospel be offensive.

26:32 Let's let the law be a mirror to our life.

26:35 And I'm just going to stand on the word of God and let the, you know, the arrows come

26:38 my way.

26:39 Yeah.

26:40 Yeah.

26:41 A couple of things.

26:42 One, I mean, I did this all through ministry.

26:43 I did it in Texas, but I do it more here now.

26:47 I mean, we hand out Bibles or if we're going through a book of the Bible, we'll hand out

26:51 like a scripture journal because I'm like, I want all you looking at this, then we'll

26:55 put it on the screen and I'll tell them, I am explaining to you the word of God.

27:00 So if you don't like this, you can be mad at me if you want, but I just want you to

27:03 be clear who you're mad at because I'm going to present to you what the word of God says.

27:09 And people are coming to our church because, and a lot of non-Christians are coming.

27:13 I think because the person of Jesus is interesting, the scriptures are interesting, they want

27:17 to understand it.

27:18 I'm like, that's my job is to explain it, not to change it, you know, it's that old

27:22 illustration of a waiter doesn't change the recipe from the kitchen to the table.

27:27 You just deliver it.

27:29 So I go, that's my job is to deliver this word to the people.

27:33 And then part of that is that courage of, I've told my staff that I was like, look,

27:40 I'm not trying to get the mob with the pitchforks and torches to come to our church.

27:46 But when they do, I won't necessarily be surprised, maybe a little disappointed, but you just

27:51 can't read the Old Testament like a Jeremiah and just go like, man, that's the call like

27:55 God calls people to preach a word and, you know, sometimes they celebrate you, sometimes

28:00 they stone you, but you got to be faithful.

28:02 Who am I serving?

28:03 Who am I doing this for?

28:04 Am I doing this for the approval of man or the approval of God?

28:07 So I kind of had to cross that line of going like, I'm doing this for the Lord.

28:13 And so I just got to take the hits that come and, you know, Jesus said it, woe to you when

28:17 all men speak well of you.

28:18 So, you know, we get hate mail and for me, it's a comfort, right?

28:22 You want the right people to hate you for the right reason.

28:24 You know, like you said, not needlessly offensive, but they crucified Jesus.

28:31 So there's going to be people that hate you because of what you represent, you know, you're

28:35 the stench of death.

28:37 So I try to do that.

28:40 But in that, I also, you know, I just love that Jesus would sit with anybody, sit with

28:45 a Samaritan woman, sit with a Pharisee.

28:48 And for me, I'm like, I'm here to reach this town with the gospel of Jesus Christ.

28:52 I'll sit with anybody and I love, you know, one of my favorite things to ask, I teach

28:56 my guys this all the time, when you talk about theology, the most important thing to ask

28:59 is when you say those words, what do you mean?

29:02 And if you can get someone talking about what they mean, what they care about, you can often

29:06 get to like a good doctor, the more questions you ask, the deeper you can get to a wound

29:10 and you know how to cure it.

29:12 I like sitting and talking with people that profoundly disagree with me and just not be

29:17 scared of that and just go, okay, let's visit about that.

29:19 If you're willing to, let's just talk about where that comes from and I'll let you, like

29:24 Francis Shafer, if I got an hour, I'll spend 55 minutes asking questions and then five

29:29 saying what I think.

29:31 So anyway, that's kind of how I've come to try to approach it.

29:35 Well, that's questioning strategy.

29:38 I mean, I tell people all the time, the best advice I could give to a salesperson from

29:41 a long sales background is you don't get paid on the information you give out.

29:44 You get paid on the information you bring in, right?

29:46 So if you're selling cars, if you listen long enough and ask the right questions, they're

29:49 going to tell you exactly what they're looking for, same with houses or insurance or whatever

29:52 the thing is.

29:53 It doesn't guarantee the sale, but it certainly gets you a lot closer.

29:56 And I think that it's also, it's a call to action because this is a guy made that works

30:01 in a para church ministry.

30:02 You are a pastor, a lead pastor of a church.

30:05 But my encouragement to men all the time is to do everything they can to steal STEL to

30:11 steal the nerves of their lead pastor to say, hey, pastor, if you start going at some of

30:17 these more hot button issues and standing on biblical grounds and say, no, we shouldn't

30:21 murder innocent image bears or the womb when they're residing in the bellies or their mothers,

30:25 or no, we should not allow children to choose their gender like, no, we should not do these

30:30 things or those things that doesn't lead to human flourishing.

30:33 I'm going to stand and take some of the arrows for you, which again, is a little bit disjointed

30:37 because the pastor is supposed to be the one that's protecting it cheap, right?

30:40 But just tell him like, look, dude, I got your back, right?

30:43 If you need people to get your back, guess what?

30:45 I got a dozen guys sitting in the lobby that also booked appointments with you.

30:48 They're going to come in here one right after the other and tell you the exact same thing.

30:52 Let's all move together.

30:54 Let's storm the gates of hell and push back darkness as a unit.

30:58 So anyway, I appreciate you letting me kind of bounce around all those different topics,

31:01 but we do need to get down to a little bit of business for today because you, sir, have

31:05 recently re-released a book, okay?

31:07 So you're not just so important that you release one, you re-released it because it's that

31:11 awesome.

31:12 The book is single dating, engaged, married, navigating life and love in the modern age.

31:17 Now, I'll be real honest with you from the beginning, Ben.

31:19 It's just me and you talking.

31:20 Okay.

31:21 I was not pumped about this book.

31:22 I was like, I want to read a book about dating.

31:24 How lame is that?

31:25 Like, this is a man's podcast.

31:26 All these dudes are married.

31:27 We need to get them squared away.

31:29 We need six packs in this audience and all that kind of stuff.

31:31 Okay.

31:32 And then I actually like, okay, put that aside and started to dig into the content.

31:35 And there's a lot there and we're going to be getting into a lot of the different individual

31:39 things, but let's start 30,000 foot view.

31:42 Why this book?

31:43 Why now?

31:44 Why you?

31:45 Why an updated edition?

31:46 Yeah, man.

31:47 That's a great question.

31:48 Well, I don't fault you for not wondering.

31:49 I didn't want to write it initially.

31:51 You know, I was like, I don't want to be the dating guy.

31:52 I'm not interested in that.

31:54 It started in my 20s at a personal level.

31:58 You know, I just don't.

31:59 I mean, God doesn't owe me a marriage.

32:00 Like I want to get married, but if I make that like and so you owe that to me, God owes

32:04 me nothing.

32:05 He can kill me tomorrow and I'm not a victim.

32:08 So then it led me down like, okay, I was the last of my friends to get married.

32:11 I'm like, then what am I?

32:13 What is singleness for?

32:14 Because I think the default assumption for people was it's to get married or to make

32:17 money or whatever.

32:18 And so I just, you know, I think it was transformative for me reading 1 Corinthians 7 where Paul

32:24 says talking about a singleness is to secure an undistracted devotion to the Lord.

32:31 That singleness, God gave all of us that season, it exists to secure something and undistracted

32:37 devotion.

32:38 It's real good at being beside you, God.

32:40 And that, for me, that transformed my single years, man.

32:44 And I got a little extreme with it.

32:45 I got rid of my TVs or writing out books of the Bible by hand.

32:48 I'm like, if I'm, if this season is for God to know him and make him known, I'm going

32:52 to know him as best I can and I'm going to build up the church as much as I can.

32:57 Because this single season will end and I want to cross the finish line.

32:59 And when it's in the rear view, know that I did it well.

33:02 And then the dating side, man, I became a college minister and this will date me.

33:06 But like right when I started, my students were like, Hey man, this thing came out called

33:12 Facebook.

33:13 You should check this out, bro.

33:14 You know, and you're watching like the iPhone kick on and then social media kick on.

33:19 And I watched in a 10 year span, I'm standing in the middle of 20 something and watching

33:24 that natural human experience of pairing off is getting more confusing, more complicated.

33:31 They're more sad, and I just stood there and going, someone needs to help them navigate

33:37 what is an increasingly complicated landscape.

33:41 And so that's why I did it.

33:43 And, and it did, you know, really well, I think because it was trying to give biblical principles

33:47 to a confusing moment, I re released it to update some of the statistics.

33:52 And then everyone just kept asking, can you write a chapter on how to break up?

33:54 You got single dating engaged, married.

33:57 What about single dating?

33:58 How do I get out of here?

34:00 And so we needed to create that chapter too.

34:03 So that should have been the shortest chapter.

34:04 It's just pop smoke, tell her, no, thank you.

34:07 I'm out of here and don't do it via text.

34:09 Okay.

34:10 Like, you know, let's get out of here.

34:11 You went into way more detail, but in the introduction, you do talk about how the death

34:15 of marriage has been greatly exaggerated at this point.

34:18 Like culturally, we're talking about it because there are things about people getting married

34:22 older than they normally did, which is also affecting the amount of kids that they are

34:26 able to biologically have, which affects, you know, replacement rates and economies and

34:30 all that stuff and all that.

34:32 But I think there's a very visceral fear of divorce and you do address that in the book.

34:38 So, you know, we're going to make our way through, you know, single dating and all the

34:41 way through the different elements of the book.

34:43 But man, when I talk to guys and these don't have to be guys that are like Andrew Tate dudes

34:49 or they're, you know, in the red pill movement or anything like that.

34:52 But when you get a firsthand look and I got a front row seat to this as a child, to the

34:57 state being able to dictate how often you're allowed to let your father speak into your

35:03 life or how often you're able to see them or being used as a pawn between a mom and a

35:08 dad that hate each other.

35:10 And you know, hey, I'm going to threaten you with this and I'm going to threaten you with

35:13 that to a young man.

35:15 He's thinking, wait, so I'm supposed to work my entire life, work myself to the bone and

35:20 provide for a family only for my wife to decide she wants out at some point or to blow up

35:26 our marriage in some way.

35:27 And then I have to give her half of my crap and then I'm expected to do that again with

35:30 another person.

35:31 So now I got a half my half my crap and it's just like, it's overwhelming for a lot of

35:34 guys.

35:35 And so they're like, I think I'll just watch porn and play video games, right?

35:38 That seems way easier than having to risk the amount of chips that you have to do in

35:43 a marriage ceremony.

35:45 But again, I'm, I'm throwing a lot of tendrils out there.

35:47 It's the closest we get to understanding how Jesus loves us because he sacrifices life

35:52 for his bride.

35:53 We don't understand that when we're looking at porn and doing fancy football lineups,

35:56 right?

35:57 So we have to enter into that, but God, it's terrifying.

36:00 So let's start there.

36:01 Yeah.

36:02 I mean, divorce is so common that people think it's normal and it's not normal.

36:08 The way it devastates us emotionally, the fear it puts in your heart is, is pervasive.

36:12 I mean, I remember listening to an interview with Kurt Cobain, you know, and it was like,

36:16 why is this guy so depressed?

36:17 Why is his music also angry?

36:18 And he said, it started with my parents divorce.

36:21 That secure that, that love of your parent is supposed to create the security that, I

36:26 mean, you can look at the studies, a child from a loving two parent home is more curious

36:31 about the world and courageous in their engagement of it.

36:35 And when you wipe out that security, they're more cautious, guarded, fearful.

36:40 It lodges damage in the heart of that kid and it's like a motionally stunted.

36:45 Yeah.

36:46 People are like, Oh, whatever.

36:47 It happens.

36:48 You go, yeah, but it's not no, it's not good is bad.

36:51 It was profoundly disappointing for me, man, like when I started dating Donna, we had the

36:56 season in our dating where I suddenly got real insecure, like what she doing, who she wears,

37:00 why she with that guy.

37:01 And I was like, why am I becoming this paranoid dude?

37:04 And I had a friend tell me like, Hey, like she's not doing anything.

37:08 That's not her.

37:10 There's something going on in you.

37:11 And I realized, Oh, I liked being single.

37:13 I liked the power of not being attracted to a girl.

37:16 And I was really falling for this girl.

37:18 And it scared me that I could get hurt.

37:21 Yeah.

37:22 And I realized, Oh, I don't want to live by fear of anything.

37:25 I don't want fear to drive anything.

37:27 So a wound is getting exposed.

37:29 Lord, would you heal that?

37:30 Would you help me trust you and be a courageous, gracious person with Donna?

37:37 And I don't think a marriage heals all your wounds, but that dating process surfaced some

37:42 wounds that the Lord was able to heal for me.

37:44 And yeah, so I think divorce does a damage that we tend to downplay that you got to look

37:50 at and go, I think a lot of guys, for me, my dating world was chaos because of that.

37:55 And so I had to stop dating and go, man, I got to get some counseling.

37:57 I got to get myself right.

37:59 Somebody helped me figure out why I'm doing some of the stuff I'm doing before I get

38:02 this relationship with a girl, right?

38:04 But I think the challenge for a lot of guys today is technology.

38:07 I mean, you've got some of the brightest minds in the world creating technology with the

38:12 purpose of just sucking in your attention.

38:15 And it's just, it's defense.

38:17 They're just running out the clock on you so you don't score points.

38:21 So you don't raise godly kids.

38:22 So you don't build a great ministry.

38:23 You've saved a million fantasy worlds online, but you haven't really engaged the human suffering

38:27 in the real world.

38:28 And, and I just think, I don't get mad at guys about that.

38:31 I just go, you're missing out, man.

38:32 You're missing out on what life's really about.

38:34 And porn is a cheap substitute.

38:36 You know, Louise Perry wrote that wonderful book, the case against the sexual revolution.

38:41 And you know, she said porn is, is for sex, what, what McDonald's is for food, amp up

38:49 the flavor and strip out the nutrients.

38:51 So I don't fault guys for being curious about sex and interested in it.

38:54 I just go, but you just got to hate this distortion.

38:56 This is a lie.

38:58 And this is a distorted version of a good desire for you.

39:01 Well, it all comes back to, are we putting God first?

39:04 And that's really where you kick off the book is putting God first.

39:06 So whether you are single or dating or married or what like, are we putting God first out

39:11 of a conversation with a guy here recently, whose divorce had a pretty horrible marriage

39:17 and a really diabolically evil woman, I think is what he was married to and no longer in

39:21 that relationship.

39:22 And he's, he's lonely right now and he wants that relationship.

39:25 He wants that connection.

39:26 I'm sure he wants to have sex.

39:27 I'm sure all those, those things are all kind of coalescing and, you know, flowing around

39:30 in his mind.

39:31 And I just kind of said, Hey man, are you currently the guy that the woman you want to be with

39:37 wants to be with?

39:38 Are you that person?

39:39 Right?

39:40 Well, no, I'm like, well, maybe we should start there.

39:42 Maybe we put God first, which is not the answer you want.

39:44 Right?

39:45 The answer you want is like, Hey man, slay and date.

39:48 Let's go.

39:49 Like, let's just like sling it everywhere you want and like, let's just, let's just do

39:52 it in.

39:53 You'll find some low discernment woman that'll marry you.

39:55 You already did it once.

39:56 Let's do it again.

39:57 And so it's like, but that's, that's really not the answer.

40:00 But practically speaking, Ben, how do we put God first in those different categories, the

40:06 category is being single being in the dating side, the engaged side, the marriage side.

40:11 How do we do that?

40:12 Yeah.

40:13 Yeah.

40:14 Yeah, that's a good question, man.

40:15 I mean, for me, I realized every dating relationship of mine was ending in chaos.

40:20 And I'm like, the only common denominator in these is me.

40:23 So there's something broken in here.

40:25 And I go, All right, let me just take a pause here.

40:27 And like I said, that's where first Corinthians helped me of Paul said, um, it's to secure

40:33 an undistracted devotion for the Lord.

40:34 If all things are made by him and for him, which the Colossians said, so I made for God.

40:39 The word devotion in Greek is the word good and beside.

40:43 Let me get real good at being beside you.

40:46 And like I said, for me, there's that, there's that informational element of I would write

40:50 out books of the Bible, like I want the word of God in my mind.

40:53 I want it to be the default switch for my assumptions of how I'm making decisions.

40:58 And then I would write it out in one color.

41:00 I'd write out my emotions in another because I'm like, I want to watch Ben deal honestly

41:04 with this.

41:05 And so I would get real honest with God, like in a journal, like I don't believe that.

41:08 You sound rude there.

41:09 I'm mad about this.

41:10 You didn't give me this.

41:11 And I would just see where my thinking was distorted and let my thinking and feeling bend

41:18 around the word of God.

41:20 I took a lot of walks in the woods with God, did a lot of writing out of his word.

41:23 And then I just decided, you know what, I was always on the fringes of my church.

41:27 I'm going to get involved and I'm going to try to build a ministry in my church and was

41:31 able to build something.

41:32 I realized how hard it is.

41:33 You start seeking out wisdom wise counsel.

41:36 I started seeing kids in our church that were healthy kids.

41:40 And so I would interview their parents because I realized I don't know what a man in a household

41:44 looks like.

41:46 So I just got into a church community and started finding the guys that I saw not are talking

41:50 a big game, but you are producing a good life.

41:53 You got an admirable son.

41:55 What did you do?

41:56 You got a happy wife.

41:57 What are you doing?

41:58 And it was in that matrix of the word of God, honesty in my soul, in the community of God,

42:04 doing the work of God.

42:05 That's devotion.

42:06 And in the midst of that, God was using all those elements to heal me.

42:10 And so when I met Don, I was like, I actually am in a healthier place to date.

42:13 I'm not looking to her to feel some vacancy.

42:15 I'm good.

42:16 Me and God are running full speed.

42:18 And I want a girl that can run alongside me.

42:21 So I tell people, a marriage is not looking into each other's eyes saying you complete

42:25 me.

42:26 I'm running hard after the Lord.

42:28 And I look and like David with Jonathan, I'm running after the Lord and I look and there's

42:32 a brother right there.

42:33 He's going to become a good friend.

42:35 There's Samuel.

42:36 He's going to become a mentor.

42:37 And then you see a girl that's cute and you're like, and that might be my wife that we're

42:41 going to run together.

42:42 And that's how you want to do it.

42:43 But start running, man.

42:44 Start running in the path of God because his commands are going to set you free.

42:47 Yeah.

42:48 And it's kind of one of those things.

42:49 I hate being one of those people that's just like, hey, just do whatever and God will figure

42:53 out a way to bless you, it's like not quite the do whatever stuff.

42:58 It's like, I think you might need to do the stuff he tells you to do.

43:00 And then like, but it there is something to the moment you stop worrying about something

43:05 it tends to figure itself out, right?

43:07 Or God tends to put the people in your life that he'll figure it out.

43:10 So that's certainly the element there.

43:11 But let's get into like the single and dating side of things.

43:14 Okay.

43:15 So there's a lot of confusion been about, okay, are you called to be single or do you just

43:21 not take enough showers, right?

43:22 So some dudes are like, you know, they're just a little bit too fat, a little bit too

43:26 slovenly, a little bit too unimpressive.

43:28 And so they're like, they're an involuntary cell, but they're an in cell.

43:31 But it's, it's not because they were called to singleness is because they currently suck

43:35 at being a human being.

43:36 So there's that side of things.

43:38 Then there is the element of being called to singleness as a blessing.

43:42 Like we see with the apostle Paul, like that's, that's what you're here for.

43:46 But then when you're getting into the dating world and you realize, okay, I'm not called

43:49 to singleness.

43:50 It's like, all right, I'm going to go to the Bible and I'm going to flip to the back and

43:52 I'm going to go to the dating section, shoot.

43:54 There's not a dating section in this book.

43:56 There's courtship kind of, and then there's like arranged marriages.

43:59 And then there's like stealing women and claiming them as your own inside your own harem.

44:03 And so it's like, well, this isn't exactly how we're supposed to do things in modernity.

44:06 So singleness, biblical dating, what in the world are we supposed to do?

44:10 Yeah, man.

44:11 Yeah, you're, there's no passage on dating, but it's interesting.

44:14 You read like Proverbs and Proverbs has passages like it's better to live on the corner of

44:19 a roof than in a house with a contentious woman.

44:22 You're like, that's not written for the married guy going, now you tell me, come on.

44:25 You know, like that's not, it's, that's for the single man going, here's the kind of woman

44:30 you want to be looking for, or a man who can't control his anger is like an unwalled city.

44:36 Don't date a guy.

44:37 That's an angry man because you will never be safe.

44:40 He's like an unwalled city.

44:41 You will not be safe in a home with that man.

44:43 So you get this wisdom literature that's showing you how to evaluate.

44:48 So I tell people dating is a modern convention and it's, it's not the best version.

44:54 Every version of pairing off has had pluses and minuses, but the biblical principle of

44:59 evaluation is true, you know, and I tell people you're looking for cause.

45:04 Are we running the right direction?

45:05 Are we both chasing the things of God?

45:07 Because you see when people get divorced, what do they say?

45:10 Our lives went different directions.

45:11 Yeah.

45:12 What do you mean?

45:13 But you don't mean like you're an engineer and she's a lawyer.

45:16 You're talking about in the big value shaping decisions of life, y'all were chasing different

45:22 values because what you value determines your values, determines your decisions, builds

45:26 a life.

45:27 And so you go, if I'm chasing the Lord, I want to be running alongside someone who has

45:31 that same value.

45:33 And then you look for character.

45:34 Can I trust you?

45:36 So when you're spending time with them, you go, does this person lie to me?

45:41 Are they always in arguments with their roommates?

45:43 Do they never have peace?

45:44 Do I listen to them, tell little white lies to their work, then faithful with little faithful

45:49 with much?

45:51 If they don't do good conflict resolution with their roommates, will they ever forgive

45:55 me?

45:56 And so as you're spending time with someone, you're going, where is their life headed?

45:59 And can I trust them with the deepest resources of my reclusive my heart?

46:04 And so that's where I think in the Bible, we have tons of information about how to evaluate

46:09 who you should lock your life up to and run with, you know.

46:13 And chemistry is what I say is the last thing, like, do you all get along?

46:16 Does she make you laugh?

46:17 Is that fun?

46:18 You know, and I get that song of Solomon, you know, the dominant metaphor in song of

46:23 Solomon is springtime hanging out with you feels like life.

46:28 And that's the part that can sometimes be the hardest to discern.

46:32 I tell believing guys, if you get those first two criteria, she's got to be chasing the

46:37 Lord and have a God shaped character.

46:39 You've eliminated most women on the planet.

46:42 All that's left is a handful of wonderful women.

46:46 And then the hard thing is just like, you know, like hanging out.

46:49 Well, and Ben, stop looking for the one.

46:52 Everyone's out there because we've been marinated in this milieu of the notebook and romance

46:56 novels and modern dating techniques where it's like, just find the one, the one that makes

47:00 you come alive.

47:01 It's like, no, if at any point in human history, somebody didn't marry their one, they ruined

47:06 it for everybody because that person was meant for someone else and that person was meant

47:09 for somebody else.

47:10 They've been absolutely destroyed by the entire thing.

47:13 So stop doing that.

47:14 And I think part of it is we think that we should be able to subsist on feelings, right?

47:20 It's like how much of marriage is a decision?

47:23 How much of it is like, I'm going to choose to love my wife right now because she's being

47:27 really, really unloving.

47:28 And so a lot of it comes down to decisions, not feelings, but inside of this whole dating

47:34 and singleness side and really on into relationships, we've seen this new modern trend of attacking

47:40 so-called purity culture, right?

47:42 So yet the purity movement, what have I been late '90s, early 2000s, you know, I kissed

47:46 dating goodbye and you had all these different things.

47:49 Purity rings, worth the way, true love weights, all that type of stuff.

47:52 And look, I didn't grow up in a family that went to church.

47:53 I started going on my own and at the age of 15 or 16, I was one of the nerds that was

47:58 wearing a ring that was like, no, I'm going to be a virgin and you know, I say in here

48:03 today and the only person I've had sex with is my spouse, right?

48:05 That's my wife.

48:06 And so, but there's so many people now, there's so many think pieces about all of

48:10 the hurt and all the harm that came to these people from the quote unquote purity movement.

48:14 And the thing is, is like, if somebody goes outside of what biblical dictates would say

48:19 that they do and they lowered that over you, like obviously that was inappropriate, but

48:23 part of it's like, life's tough, get a helmet, like pull your pants up and just move on with

48:27 your life.

48:28 Yeah.

48:29 But you have so many people that are using that now as a crutch, Ben, as well, you know

48:32 what?

48:33 We're just going to get rid of this.

48:34 I think the whole reason is is Satan is very, very good at let's actually take hurt that

48:41 people, you know, experience during this purity time period and let's now say the biblical

48:47 definition of what is good and God honoring sexuality must be questioned as well.

48:53 How do you rot something like that out from the very inside?

48:57 And so I want you to talk a little bit about that because you didn't really explicitly

49:01 go into purity culture in your book that much, you just kind of like mentioned it here or

49:05 there.

49:06 But what's your read on that whole situation?

49:07 Yeah.

49:08 It was interesting, man.

49:09 When I wrote the book, every now and again, I go to places and people like, did you write

49:12 this as a response to I kiss dating it by?

49:15 Because when I wrote it, there weren't a lot of now there's, I think a lot of dating kind

49:18 of conversation and books out there.

49:21 When I wrote it, I think the last one was I kissed dating it by and I was like, I didn't

49:24 read that book.

49:25 That's not really how I grew up.

49:26 I mean, I was like, so I wasn't reacting to that.

49:30 And honestly, man, it made me feel really grateful.

49:32 I was like, God gave me good mentors.

49:34 So I didn't have a lot of church baggage.

49:36 So a lot of my life isn't reacting against a legalistic church because I didn't have

49:41 one.

49:42 So, you know, Martin Luther says it, you know, in his way that the human flesh is like a

49:47 drunk on a horse, you know, it can fall off either way, you can fall off towards legalism

49:52 and just be a tyrant or towards license and just be, you know, reprobate and we tend to

49:58 do both.

49:59 Some people that are like, hey, there were so many legalists in the church.

50:02 So now let's take all boundaries off sexuality and go, that's not the win to fall off the

50:06 horse the other side.

50:07 It's going, no, what does it mean to ride with the Lord and, you know, as it relates

50:10 to sexuality, that's what's fun for me, man, being up here as you go.

50:13 They've got a lot of people that aren't believers and, you know, it's become very natural now.

50:19 We've moved sex to early in the dating relationship, but now you got secular books like Christine

50:23 Embers or Louise Perry's that are like, hey, I don't think this was good for us.

50:28 I think taking sexuality out of the confines of a loving commitment was a bad idea.

50:32 And you're like, yeah.

50:33 And so you're watching a culture like fall backwards into biblical principles in the

50:37 same way that in ancient Rome, you know, I read a bunch of books on a church history

50:40 major of like, why did people in Rome commit to Jesus Christ?

50:44 Like why do that if it would cost you at least your job, if not your life?

50:47 And for many of them, it was because the Christian sexual ethic, they said, we think

50:52 it's backward.

50:53 We think it's stupid.

50:54 We think it's weird.

50:55 And yet you're all happier than us.

50:58 That is going on.

50:59 And they realized, oh, the biblical sexual ethic is not repressive.

51:03 It's freedom.

51:05 You know, I use that illustration of like, do you start fires in your home?

51:08 Yeah.

51:09 If you brick it in with mortar and steel and brick, it'll bring warmth to you.

51:14 You get that fire outside of boundaries, it'll burn down everything you love and sexualities

51:19 that way.

51:20 We've taken it outside of boundaries and it's hurt us.

51:22 It hurts people, hurts kids, hurts women, hurts men.

51:25 And so I'm a big fan of a biblical sexual ethic, but not out of some commitment to some

51:31 repressive past.

51:32 Like I said, I didn't even write in response to that.

51:34 I don't think much about it.

51:35 For me, I'm just like, the best way to, I'll tell you this, what broke my heart when I

51:41 was a teenager, this guy gave me a sermon series on song, a Solomon said, you should

51:46 listen to this.

51:47 I'm like, listen to sermons, like on my free time, like I don't like listening to them

51:50 at church.

51:51 Like, you know, like driving a car and listening to a stuff, I thought it was the dumbest thing

51:53 I'd ever heard.

51:54 Literally, bro, I was driving a truck across Texas for work, fell asleep while driving,

51:59 woke up bouncing along the side of the road, overcorrected, 180, almost wrecked the truck.

52:06 But I was still miles from where I was supposed to like drop off my, you know, payload.

52:09 And I was like, dude, I have got to stay awake.

52:12 And I had thrown these sermons in my car and I opened it up and there was one called sex.

52:17 And I was like, that ought to do it.

52:19 So I put in the sermon called sex.

52:21 And this dude didn't shame you with a bunch of standards.

52:25 He was literally just walking through the book of song of Solomon and I started crying

52:28 in the car because I was like, that's what I want.

52:31 And I realized that the porn I had been exposed to, the assumptions I had about women, they

52:37 were a distortion of the beautiful thing God made.

52:40 And he won me over to I want to live life God's way.

52:44 I want my sexuality to be because I trust God that he knows what's best.

52:48 And so that's what I've tried to do in ministry is just hold forth the beauty of the word

52:54 of God, of Jesus Christ, of his way to live life.

52:56 That's where you're going to flourish.

52:58 And my hope is it'll be compelling to the legalist and the person of license going,

53:04 yeah, that's better.

53:06 I certainly think you you threaded that needle and there's a great quote when you're talking

53:10 about sex specifically in the book.

53:12 So much of what is called love making in society today is just an attempt to use another person

53:17 without having to take on the hassles and inconveniences of genuinely loving them.

53:22 But in the end, we wound ourselves, our brothers, our sisters, and our society, and you make

53:26 reference to Galatians 5 19 through 24 and Ephesians 5 1 through 5.

53:31 And so obviously, yes, we have we have shifted how things go where we do sex first, where

53:36 we don't even get to know the person's last name in some cases, in some cases, not even

53:40 their first name.

53:41 You have these only fans models as they're called, but prostitutes that are sleeping with

53:46 hundreds of men in a day, they do these open casting calls, one of them slept with a thousand

53:50 men in one day.

53:52 And there was one in particular, I'm not going to mention her name because I don't need any

53:54 by Google in it.

53:55 But there was a gal who slept with I think it was a hundred men in one day or something

53:58 like that.

53:59 And she said, she's talking to this guy interviewing her and she said by like the 30th one I stopped

54:03 making eye contact with them, like I can't really remember it.

54:06 And she breaks down crying and it's like, Oh, I wish I had been there like in that moment

54:12 to say, like I get emotional every time I talk about the story, but when the woman with

54:16 the problem of blood, I don't know why the story, like the chosen changed that that story

54:21 for me because it was like a three episode arc where it's like four sentences in the

54:24 Bible.

54:25 But he calls her daughter, right?

54:28 And this is a woman that was put out of society because of her issue with blood, her constant

54:33 menstrual cycle, right?

54:34 She was ritualistically unclean, she has been put outside of society, she doesn't have

54:38 family anymore.

54:39 And he calls her daughter, I wish I could have been in that moment to call her daughter

54:44 to say you are a daughter of the most high king and you are worthy and you can repent

54:49 of this.

54:51 And I say all that to kind of turn to a little bit of a darker side that because of what I

54:55 do been and certainly because of what you do, you hear about some of the worst stories possible

54:59 when it comes to sex, sexual assault, sexual abuse, pedophilia, pornography, all those types

55:05 of things.

55:07 But here lately, Ben, I've talked to so many men that are in what would be categorically

55:12 called sexless marriages.

55:14 These are people that have sex inside of marriage less than six times a year.

55:18 Okay.

55:19 And in almost 100% of those cases been the women are in complete control of that.

55:25 So they don't want to have sex for whatever reason or they don't want to have sex with

55:29 their husband, perhaps they want to have it with somebody else or something outside of

55:32 that, but they are using sex as a power tool inside of their relationship and the level

55:38 of depravity that I feel and just the angst I feel for these men and anguish that are

55:43 in the situation because guess what?

55:45 They're trying to sacrificially love their spouses, but and they want to have sex.

55:49 They want to have that union, but now sex, this great gift from God is being used as

55:54 a weapon against them to control them, to keep them down.

55:59 So what would be your advice because I find myself flat footed, Ben, every time I have

56:04 one of those conversations about what the hell do I tell this dude?

56:07 But it's like, what would you tell to a man like that that is having the most, this most

56:11 beautiful and perfect gift used as a weapon against them?

56:14 Yeah, that's hard, man.

56:16 You know, I, a couple of things come to mind and just kind of talk about it.

56:20 You know, I think of Ephesians five, talking about the husband to a wife, we're meant to

56:26 love our wife like Christ, love the church and gave himself up for her, you know.

56:32 And so I tell guys what, what did that look that gave himself up as areas to not talking

56:36 about ongoing, talking about a particular moment is looking at the cross.

56:41 He sacrificed while we were sinners.

56:45 So he didn't wait for some signal of desire for him before he initiated.

56:50 So I tell people, Christ like love is initiating.

56:52 You go first and sacrificing for the sake of your bride.

56:57 So what can happen in marriages is you're not giving me what I want.

57:00 So I'm not giving you what you want.

57:01 And this weird negotiation goes like, who's going to give first?

57:06 And I think for the, for the man, if we're to love like Christ, you go, I'm going to

57:10 initiate to create an environment where you can flourish under God.

57:13 That's what I'm going to do.

57:14 And so a lot of times for women, it's, I don't emotionally feel safe.

57:20 So I don't, I don't feel safe emotionally being vulnerable.

57:25 So I don't feel safe physically being vulnerable.

57:27 I'm not advocating, but you're talking about like, I'm not saying it's okay for women to

57:30 do this or that.

57:31 I'm just saying some of it may be that a guy's mad because she's withholding sex and you

57:35 go, but what is she not getting in this marriage?

57:39 It's worth just getting curious about, am I creating an environment where she can flirt?

57:44 Am I listening to her?

57:45 You know, for my wife and I, we realized in our marriage, we don't watch much TV.

57:50 We put our phones away when I get home from work.

57:52 We spend a lot of time talking, a lot of time talking, just sitting on the back porch catching

57:57 it.

57:58 And I've realized with my wife, the more I can listen to her, the more safe she feels

58:01 with me.

58:03 And the more often that sort of becomes a doorway into physical intimacy.

58:08 I think of Hosea, you know, God gives him that tough pull, you know, go, go marry a whore.

58:15 That's what it says, and then it's tough for Gomer because he's like, Gomer, that's probably

58:19 you.

58:20 Like that's a tough, that's a tough call for both of them, you know, and you go, okay,

58:24 he goes and after she sells herself, he finds her on a slave block and she can't get the

58:30 going rate for a slave in that day.

58:32 And God says, go buy her.

58:34 Yeah.

58:35 Like, dude, she wronged you.

58:36 Yeah.

58:37 A lot over and over again.

58:38 And God says, go buy her and pay full price.

58:41 And then he says, cause that's what I'm doing with my people.

58:43 And then he says, I will allure you into the desert and I will speak tenderly to you.

58:48 So God's like, you sinned against me, but I'm not going to rage on you.

58:51 I'm going to be tender with you.

58:52 So I'd tell men, like if the anger is escalating, whether it's hot anger, yelling or freezing

58:58 out, I would say you be the first one to disarm and just say, what can I do to serve you?

59:05 And then you may need to get a referee in the conversation, man, of get a counselor that

59:08 can help you referee that conversation.

59:10 Because it probably didn't start yesterday, it probably went back to year one of marriage.

59:14 Most marriages, I know where it's that frozen out physically.

59:18 You let little irritants like sand in a stream, you know, a silt bed grows up and it stops

59:25 the river.

59:26 What stopped up your river of intimacy?

59:28 It probably wasn't some big moment.

59:30 It was just this slow accumulation of little resentments and then suddenly the love stopped

59:35 flowing.

59:36 All may need to go back and process hurts from seven years ago.

59:41 And that's not fun, but what are you going to do?

59:46 You're going to leave?

59:47 No, that does not honor the Lord and you're going to run the same play again with some

59:51 other woman.

59:52 Like I would fight for intimacy the best you can.

59:56 And it's a difficult thing to be in that spot.

59:59 I don't want to belittle it, but I would just challenge men.

1:00:02 You're right to be mad and frustrated about not being able to have sex, but you've got

1:00:08 to go come and die for that and go, what can I do?

1:00:12 What tools can I employ?

1:00:14 What situation?

1:00:15 What variables can I change so that this marriage can flourish under God?

1:00:19 And it may be calling for some help getting some counselor, your church around you.

1:00:25 But I think if you can heal that relationship, sexuality is an outflow of intimacy emotionally.

1:00:30 Well, and I think as well, we're going to have to give an account for how we've lived

1:00:36 our lives, not for how other people's have lived theirs, right?

1:00:39 You're going to have to give an account for the influence you've had on others.

1:00:42 But I remember asking Jobe about this and he was like, yeah, the women in these situations

1:00:45 are being awful.

1:00:46 They're being terrible.

1:00:48 Like this is so dark and demonic and sinful and they're going to have to answer for it.

1:00:53 And so I have to answer for my part.

1:00:54 I can't take responsibility for both.

1:00:57 I can't take responsibility for another adult.

1:00:59 So that's pretty serious topic.

1:01:01 So let's downshift just a hair because we're winding to a close here.

1:01:03 There was an interesting thing that I somewhat disagreed with whenever we were talking about

1:01:09 the engagement process, which for a lot of guys, my audience, it's not a whole lot of

1:01:12 engaged dudes, but for those of you, this is for you, but also if you're married, this

1:01:15 should land.

1:01:16 But in the book, you talk about during the engagement process, how the engaged couples

1:01:21 should focus on combining the families.

1:01:23 All right.

1:01:24 So you have the Smiths and the Joneses and we're going to combine these families, right?

1:01:28 And so I remember, uh, it was, I think it was Mark Triscoll that first talked about.

1:01:32 He's like, no, when you're getting married, you're the family now.

1:01:36 You're the family unit.

1:01:37 Her family is now extended family.

1:01:39 Your family is now extended family.

1:01:42 And guess what?

1:01:43 If they're cadence for Christmas and Thanksgiving and other holidays and stuff like that doesn't

1:01:47 match the one in your household, well, guess what?

1:01:49 It's yours that wins out and some people are going to get their feelings hurt.

1:01:53 But when you start having mother-in-laws or father-in-laws that get to dictate terms

1:01:56 in your house, that is a recipe for absolute destructive disaster.

1:02:00 And so I want to give you just an opportunity to elucidate your point a little bit further

1:02:05 about, okay, when we talk about combining families, what does that mean and how are we going

1:02:09 to make that happen?

1:02:10 Yeah.

1:02:11 I would definitely say, I mean, you know, Genesis talks about that you'll leave your

1:02:16 parents and cleave to one another.

1:02:18 So I tell Donna, like the innermost circle is God, you and me.

1:02:22 So I would affirm that like that is the innermost circle.

1:02:24 And if the circle ever becomes you and your mom, and I'm on the outside of the decision-making

1:02:28 circle, that got messed up or like me and my mom and no, no, no, we're supposed to leave

1:02:33 and then cleave to each other.

1:02:35 So I think that marriage relationship does become central in your family.

1:02:39 But I talked to a lot of guys.

1:02:41 This happens to me a lot on the engagement process.

1:02:42 They're like, you know what?

1:02:44 Her dad's not that excited about us getting engaged, but I'm just going to do it anyway.

1:02:48 You know, and they're like, and you're like, hey, man, that man's job as soon as he had

1:02:53 that baby girl and watch that girl come into the world.

1:02:57 He teared up at the beauty and then a split second later, he thought about all the darkness

1:03:01 in the world.

1:03:02 Yeah.

1:03:03 And he made a vow.

1:03:05 I will rage against the dark to protect this little girl.

1:03:08 And you are a stranger saying, give me your baby.

1:03:12 It's right for that protective element in him to go like, who are you, man?

1:03:15 And what you have to do is what all men do in relationships convince you, I'm a friend,

1:03:20 not a threat.

1:03:21 You know, if you and so that doesn't become your primary job trying to win over her dad

1:03:26 or her mom, but those are going to be the grandparents of your kids.

1:03:29 So just don't be needlessly offensive.

1:03:31 So I tell people like, if you want to have a smooth engagement, I talk about it like

1:03:35 docking to, you know, bringing your boat into a dock.

1:03:38 If you're good at it, it just slides up.

1:03:41 If you're bad, you can dock up and send wood and fiberglass going everywhere and smash

1:03:45 in.

1:03:46 I'm like, Hey, just as your docking families, yeah, y'all are going to be the central unit

1:03:50 here.

1:03:51 But don't be needlessly offensive, man.

1:03:53 So when I've met Donna's parents, it was like, Hey, I just want to win them over.

1:03:57 I want to ask them questions about their life.

1:03:59 People love to talk about their life.

1:04:00 Let me be genuinely interested in you.

1:04:02 Let me celebrate all that I can celebrate in your life.

1:04:04 Let me ask you questions and then let me help you see I'm a competent person.

1:04:09 I have the capacity to care for your daughter.

1:04:12 I am concerned to do that.

1:04:13 I know that when she gets pregnant, there'll be a vulnerability to her.

1:04:16 I'm going to protect her.

1:04:17 I've, I've saved money.

1:04:18 I'm like, show them you can trust me.

1:04:21 And then they, then it just becomes easy to celebrate.

1:04:23 It just makes holidays easier, like you're going to see these people.

1:04:25 They're going to be around.

1:04:27 So just do your best to make that as easy as possible and not difficult.

1:04:30 So that's what I encourage you guys to do is like, Hey, just think about that.

1:04:33 You know, for Donna, I tell the story of like her dad was a mortician.

1:04:37 When we got engaged, I showed up at their house and he suddenly got a call about a viewing.

1:04:42 He had to dress a dead body and he had back problems.

1:04:45 He had no one else to do it.

1:04:47 And so I had to pick up a body and dress it.

1:04:50 And I was like, this is not what I thought I had to do.

1:04:53 I didn't think this was part of it, but I did it.

1:04:56 And man, he and I were cool ever since, like, you know what, great, good.

1:05:02 Now we're good.

1:05:03 And so I just think that's not your primary role.

1:05:06 But as your families are coming together, you go, what can I do to show these people

1:05:09 I honor them?

1:05:10 I honor that they spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to raise a child.

1:05:13 I honored that they bring her into this life, I honored that they cared for as they give

1:05:17 her over to me.

1:05:18 Let me honor them for making that choice, you know, so that's what I mean by that.

1:05:22 All right.

1:05:23 Living in life and honor guys, single dating engaged, married, that is the name of the

1:05:27 book.

1:05:28 Guys, it is in the show notes.

1:05:29 Go and check it out.

1:05:30 But before we let you wrap up and get out of here, you know, there's always what have

1:05:32 you done for me now, but what have you done for me lately?

1:05:35 But what's next is what I want to know.

1:05:36 So is there another book in the offing?

1:05:39 What's next for you in terms of ministries or anything you're working on?

1:05:42 You haven't told anybody about that you're going to tell my audience about because they're

1:05:44 cool and they stayed till the end of the interview.

1:05:46 Give me some good stuff.

1:05:47 Let's go.

1:05:48 Yeah.

1:05:49 I've got so many different ideas of resources I want to create man, but I'll tell you all

1:05:53 my focus right now is on building this church, bro.

1:05:55 I'm just telling you that like God is on the move in DC.

1:06:00 We are growing.

1:06:01 We are running out of space and places and we're in a pretty like we're on U street.

1:06:06 That's where people go to party and we're seeing people get baptized that we were the

1:06:11 last stop on a drunken rager through town.

1:06:14 They stumbled in and didn't know it was a church and now they're getting baptized up

1:06:17 front.

1:06:18 So like so much of my energy now is Lord help us keep expanding the power of your gospel,

1:06:25 the size of your church in Washington, DC.

1:06:27 So if anyone's ever in DC come see us, man, the whole world is coming in this pretty exciting

1:06:31 right now.

1:06:32 All right.

1:06:33 Very good.

1:06:34 Well, that's all for me.

1:06:35 Is there anything else you want to get off your chest?

1:06:36 No, I feel good, man.

1:06:37 I'm grateful for you.

1:06:38 I'm grateful for what you're doing here and we got to talk.

1:06:41 Well, you mentioned Rick Warren, and we don't got to get into this.

1:06:44 Russell Moore, I don't know what they said.

1:06:46 But I've always liked.

1:06:48 Don't worry.

1:06:49 Russell's only going to get out of me, but I don't keep track with that stuff.

1:06:51 So I don't know.

1:06:52 I'll give you all the dirt.

1:06:53 Off air.

1:06:54 Don't worry.

1:06:55 I keep notes.

1:06:56 I've got a whole roll of decks of stuff that people have said that have offended me personally.

1:06:59 Okay.

1:07:00 Well, Ben, hey, I really appreciate your time.

1:07:01 We'll talk again soon.

1:07:02 Seriously, buddy.

1:07:03 There you go, guys.

1:07:04 I hope you enjoyed my time with Ben, but before we let you go, we are going to do a

1:07:07 quick resilience boost at undaunted life or mission is equipping men to push back darkness

1:07:10 with content that forges spiritual mental and physical resilience.

1:07:13 So I've got a link to Amazon where you can buy your copy, the updated edition of single

1:07:17 dating engaged and married.

1:07:19 Thank you for listening to this podcast.

1:07:21 Wherever you're listening to this, please subscribe, rate and leave us a positive five

1:07:24 star review.

1:07:25 If you want me to come speak live at your event or on your podcast, just shoot me an

1:07:28 email to info@undonton.life.

1:07:30 That's I N F O at undonton.life, follow us on Instagram and like us on Facebook and check

1:07:35 out our website for everything else, including how to donate to keep more content like this

1:07:38 coming your way, just go to www.undonton.life.

1:07:41 And as always, we want to thank the band Holy Name for allowing us to use their music for

1:07:44 our content.

1:07:45 The music on this podcast is our song Perpetua, which is off their self-titled debut album

1:07:50 on Face Down Records.

1:07:51 The links are in the description.

1:07:52 I'm your host, Kyle Thompson.

1:07:54 Remember, keep pushing back darkness, keep forging spiritual, mental and physical resilience.

1:08:01 Keep seeking the lion of Judah.

1:08:08 [music]