CHASE REPLOGLE | The 5 Masculine Instincts (Ep. 344)

0:00 (upbeat music)

0:02 - This is Undaunted Life, a man's podcast.

0:21 I'm your host Kyle Thompson.

0:22 Let's get into it.

0:24 All right guys, today I've got a special guest

0:25 on the podcast.

0:26 His name is Chase Replogle.

0:27 He's a pastor of Bent Oak Church in Ozark, Missouri.

0:29 He's also a writer and a podcaster.

0:31 And he is the author of a new book

0:33 that came out this year is actually released back in March.

0:35 It's called The Five Masculine Instincts,

0:37 A Guide to Becoming a Better Man.

0:39 Now, the majority of what we talk about today

0:41 really hinges on a lot of the stuff in this book,

0:43 but you should look at this conversation today

0:45 as a good example of if you don't really understand

0:47 somebody's point or even if you vehemently disagree

0:50 with their worldview or their point or particular issue,

0:53 there is a way to go into that conversation

0:55 to where you can find a better understanding.

0:58 Not necessarily that you'll end up agreeing

0:59 with the person, but find a better understanding

1:01 of where they're coming from.

1:02 'Cause as I was reading through this book,

1:03 I was like even writing in the March,

1:04 I was like, man, I don't really get this.

1:06 Like, am I just too distracted?

1:07 Am I reading this when I'm too tired?

1:09 There were a lot of things that just were not landing with me.

1:11 So a lot of time in this podcast,

1:13 I was able to get into some of that subject matter

1:15 and it really, really helped me understand

1:16 what he was going with.

1:17 But also we spent a lot of time talking about meekness,

1:19 kind of how Jordan Peterson has helped

1:21 the modern Christian church understand the word meekness

1:24 better and how he's kind of turned that around.

1:25 We talked about rites of passage and how important that is.

1:28 I even got a little choked up towards the end

1:29 with my own answer, but he gave an answer towards the end.

1:32 I think it was the second to last question

1:33 that I thought was fantastic.

1:35 And it was the difference between basically

1:37 how certain people read the Bible and go to church

1:39 and what they expect versus what they should do

1:43 and what they should expect.

1:45 So I just want to tee it up like that.

1:46 I want to make sure I leave a little needle in the bone

1:48 so you guys can check that out.

1:49 But without further ado, let's get into it.

1:51 Chase Replogo, welcome to Undaunted Life of Man's podcast.

1:56 - Yeah, thanks for having me.

1:56 It's good to talk to you.

1:57 Did I nail the last name?

1:59 'Cause I've been practicing for all of 15 seconds.

2:01 - Look, I would say anything that starts

2:03 with an R is close enough.

2:05 So I think it counts, yeah.

2:06 - Well, I went to school with a guy

2:08 with the last name Paholski and it was like super Polish

2:11 and like none of those letters made sense

2:13 with how he pronounced it.

2:14 So it's not quite that bad.

2:16 But in terms of starting out,

2:17 in terms of introduction, if you will,

2:19 I don't like starting too broad,

2:20 but we at least need to start somewhat broad.

2:23 You're a pastor, why in the world did you become a pastor?

2:26 - Yeah, well, it wasn't my original plan.

2:28 I thought I was going to law school.

2:29 My dad's a 35 year state trooper,

2:31 served for a long time crime scene investigator.

2:34 My brother recently just got out of the Marine Corps

2:36 as a captain.

2:37 So I was sort of the odd one out in my family,

2:39 deciding to go to the path of ministry.

2:41 But I felt God's call asking me to do this work.

2:43 And that's been confirmed in so many ways.

2:46 And so I'm really grateful for an opportunity

2:48 just to pastor a congregation and be in people's lives

2:51 and open up scripture every week with them.

2:53 - Well, that was a very cute PC answer.

2:55 But I want to know about the crappy stuff.

2:57 What is the worst part about being a pastor?

2:59 Because there are, you know,

3:00 different people kind of get into pastoral work

3:02 and then they end up going into business.

3:03 You don't really usually see that the opposite way.

3:05 I had Dale Partridge one not that long ago.

3:07 And he said the same thing.

3:08 He went from business to pastoral work.

3:10 So like, it's kind of sucks sometimes, doesn't it?

3:14 - Yeah. Okay. Well, right now is a really hard time

3:15 to be a pastor, if you want to be honest.

3:17 Cause I'll say to my wife, when do I get to have an opinion?

3:20 You know, everybody has opinions right now

3:21 about everything we're facing.

3:23 And a part of being a pastor is trying to hold together

3:26 a group of people, trying to speak truth and be honest

3:28 in a time that's really complicated,

3:30 but recognizing my job as a pastor

3:32 is not just to fix everyone.

3:34 My not jobs not to let people walk in

3:36 and all of a sudden say, hey, I know what your problem is.

3:38 Here's how you need to fix it.

3:39 I don't always know how to fix some of the problems people face.

3:42 My job as a pastor is to walk in and say,

3:44 well, what might God be doing in this situation?

3:47 And sometimes that's in really complicated

3:49 and messy situations.

3:50 Sometimes it's obvious, sometimes it's not.

3:53 So a lot of being a pastor is just walking with people

3:55 and trying to figure out what's bigger than you in your life.

3:58 What's going on that you've overlooked?

3:59 What are the things that God might be doing

4:01 or teaching you right now that might not be easy,

4:03 that might be complicated,

4:05 but could actually be a path forward to something better?

4:07 So one of my favorite pastor says a pastor's job

4:10 is just to say God, just to draw people's attention

4:13 to something beyond themselves, what God might be doing.

4:16 - So with that in mind, this is going to be coming out,

4:18 you know, probably a couple of months after we talk,

4:20 we're sitting right in the middle of a slew of,

4:23 in my opinion, amazing Supreme Court decisions,

4:25 one of those being the overturning of Roe v. Wade.

4:27 There's been a couple of other decisions

4:29 that have been, you know, basically a loud full throw

4:32 to support for religious liberty in this country,

4:34 one in New York and one with a football coach.

4:36 And I'll talk about that on the show.

4:38 And, you know, then we're right in the middle of Pride Month.

4:41 And it's like, if you're a pastor that doesn't fly,

4:44 you know, a rainbow flag outside your church.

4:46 And all of a sudden, you're not just bigoted,

4:47 but you're hateful and you don't,

4:49 you don't understand the gospel,

4:50 you don't understand love,

4:51 but let some secular humanists tell you what that's like.

4:54 How do you traverse that as a pastor?

4:56 Because I gotta be honest, one of my biggest gripes

4:58 with pastors, especially mega church pastors,

5:00 is they won't touch any of the hot button issues

5:03 because they're in the middle of the growth model.

5:04 And if you're an entrepreneur in the middle of growth model,

5:07 you don't wanna do anything that's gonna keep people

5:09 from filling your coffers,

5:10 keep people from filling the seats.

5:12 But the flock, the people that you're purported to lead

5:16 through these situations, they leave your church,

5:19 like feeling motivated,

5:20 but then they have no idea how to talk

5:21 to their seven year old about their seven year old's friend

5:24 that thinks they're trans.

5:25 Or, you know, how to talk about Black Lives Matter

5:27 and how that, the sentence makes sense,

5:29 but the organization doesn't.

5:30 Am I making sense?

5:31 - Yeah, so I'm a small church pastor.

5:33 I've got a congregation of about 100 people.

5:35 And part of the reason I love doing that

5:37 is because I'm in people's lives.

5:39 I know what's going on in their lives.

5:41 I know those challenges you're describing

5:42 that are real with their kids,

5:44 with the school choices they're making.

5:46 I know how these political moments impact them in personal ways.

5:49 And I think as a pastor,

5:50 you've gotta keep yourself in the middle of that.

5:52 You can't allow yourself to just become PR.

5:54 You can't allow yourself to become a brand or marketing.

5:57 You've gotta set yourself in the middle

5:58 of where these issues actually meet people's real lives

6:01 and the complexity of them.

6:03 And so, yeah, we've been celebrating, you know,

6:05 one of the things I took away from the Roe versus Wade

6:07 decision was God can still do things

6:10 that perhaps even in my life, I thought were impossible.

6:12 You know, I've spent my entire life.

6:14 We've been under the Supreme Court's decision

6:16 on Roe versus Wade.

6:17 And so to see that change,

6:18 well, it's a couple of things.

6:19 It's a reminder that our votes matter,

6:22 the decisions we make and the way we interact

6:24 with culture matter,

6:25 but it's also a realization that God can change things

6:28 that I've just assumed are the way that our culture,

6:30 the way that our world is.

6:32 So it's actually got me feeling pretty hopeful

6:33 about the future that maybe there's a day going forward

6:36 where some of the craziness we're experiencing right now.

6:39 God intervenes and does things we thought weren't possible.

6:42 And God can draw straight lines with crooked sticks.

6:44 And I've never seen a more crooked stick,

6:46 maybe than Donald J. Trump.

6:47 But at the same time,

6:48 like I think the thing that it's made me do chase

6:50 is it's made me kind of ashamed of my pessimism

6:52 because I'm a very pessimistic guy.

6:54 And to a degree, I feel like that's been

6:56 a very good mechanism for me

6:58 because like whenever I go into like a jujitsu tournament,

7:00 I assume I'm going to lose every match horribly.

7:03 But I prepare the exact same as if I walk in

7:05 with this super positive, like walking through.

7:08 Oh, no, nothing's going to stop me.

7:09 Nothing's going to hold me down.

7:10 No, I prepare as if embarrassment is going to happen.

7:14 And then that almost pushes me further.

7:16 But pessimism, like I never thought

7:18 we would see the end of Roe v. Wade.

7:20 And I was even doing the math when Donald Trump was

7:22 in office and I was like, yeah,

7:23 but even if they get Amy Coney Bear,

7:24 like I'm not exactly sure about this person

7:26 and I can't really trust Kavanaugh right now.

7:28 Justice Roberts is a complete tool.

7:29 And then here we are,

7:31 a five four decision technically to overturn.

7:33 But again, that's how we're going to be talking about today

7:36 on today's show for the most part.

7:37 We do need to move into the main reason why you're on the show.

7:39 That's because of this book,

7:40 the five masculine instincts.

7:41 So you sent this over to me again.

7:42 Thank you so much for sending this over,

7:43 but it's a guide to becoming a better man.

7:46 So we're just going to dig into the book

7:47 and we're just going to kind of go chronological,

7:49 but we might come in and out depending upon what you say

7:51 because we've already covered a ton of ground

7:53 in the first like five or six minutes of this thing.

7:55 But the very first sentence of chapter one.

7:58 So the first sentence of the book is this.

8:00 This book is about masculinity,

8:02 but honestly, I'm getting tired about,

8:05 getting tired of talking about masculinity.

8:07 So that begs the question from the very, very beginning.

8:10 There are already a ton of these books,

8:12 these Christian manhoods, how to be a better man

8:14 and how to do this and how to do that books.

8:16 There's a ton of them out there.

8:17 Some of them are good, most of them are garbage.

8:19 So why add to the pile?

8:21 Like what's unique about yours?

8:23 Why start with that sentence

8:24 and then proceed to write 200 pages worth of stuff?

8:27 - Yeah, good question.

8:28 You know, it's funny, all these Christian men's books

8:30 tend to open in one of two ways.

8:31 They either open with an image of an author

8:33 on the side of a mountain hunting elk

8:35 trying to like prove to you their manhood, right?

8:37 Like look at me in this masculine context.

8:40 Or they open with a man explaining

8:42 how he'd never fit the masculine mold

8:44 and he grew up discouraged

8:45 'cause he didn't feel like a man.

8:48 I think manhood, to be honest with you,

8:49 we'll see what you think about this.

8:50 I think it's one of the things

8:52 that if you aim directly at it,

8:53 you tend to miss it

8:54 and you get a kind of caricature of it.

8:56 If you wake up every morning saying,

8:58 "How do I be a man?

8:59 How do I prove myself a man?

9:00 How do I become more of a man?"

9:02 I think you end up becoming kind of awkward.

9:03 Like that doesn't feel like true manhood to me,

9:07 but it is a worthwhile pursuit.

9:09 I do wanna be a man.

9:10 I wanna be growing in my masculinity and my manhood.

9:12 But I think the core work we've misplaced where that work is.

9:16 It's not primarily an external focus.

9:19 The core work of becoming a man

9:21 is primarily an internal pursuit.

9:23 How do I cultivate the kind of character,

9:25 the kind of discipline and the kind of virtue

9:28 that can bear responsibility well?

9:30 And the way that I try to make this point in the book is,

9:33 look, if I said what our world needs is men

9:35 who can serve families and marriages and communities better.

9:38 Like I agree with that 100%.

9:40 But if you take a man and just say,

9:42 "Be a better father, be a better husband,

9:44 be a better church member, be a better community member,"

9:47 that responsibility alone doesn't guarantee a man

9:50 that he has the character necessary to do that work well.

9:53 I think that conversation about

9:54 how does a man grow in character

9:57 is the most important conversation

9:58 about how to become a better man.

10:00 Because as you grow in character and virtue,

10:02 that sense of manhood that you're after

10:04 and that responsibility of fulfilling manhood that you're after

10:07 comes as a by-product of that internal work

10:10 of cultivating discipline and character.

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10:39 - Where I would maybe push back on that,

10:45 it's not even technically pushback,

10:46 it's I don't think enough men are asking themselves

10:49 that question when they wake up in the morning,

10:51 which is what's required of me as a man today?

10:55 And I think most guys are just kind of like,

10:57 just like they did in school,

10:58 like they just kind of meeba their way through

11:00 and they just kind of end up where they end up

11:02 and then they lament where they've ended up

11:03 and then they get bitter and then they get alone.

11:05 And then, you know, a bunch of negative outcomes

11:08 come from that, but it stems a lot.

11:10 And you talk about this in the first part of your book,

11:12 you talk about the American Psychological Association,

11:14 which is, I don't know how we can even trust

11:17 that organization considering what they've done,

11:18 even on the transgender kids side of things.

11:20 But you quoted this from a 2019 publication of theirs,

11:23 traditional masculinity marked by stoicism,

11:26 competitiveness, dominance, and aggression

11:28 is on the whole harmful.

11:30 Men socializing this way are less likely

11:32 to engage in healthy behaviors.

11:34 So it's garbage and nonsense like that,

11:36 that when a dutiful, thoughtful man like myself reads,

11:40 if I'm not that next step of discernment,

11:43 I'd be like, well, I guess I don't really need

11:45 to discover the manhood side of what I'm supposed to do,

11:48 because according to this government organization,

11:50 that's bad, no matter what.

11:52 Is that, does that kind of make sense?

11:53 - Yeah, absolutely.

11:54 There's an Irish proverb that says,

11:56 "For every mile of road, there's two miles of ditch."

12:00 So in other words, there's more than one way

12:02 that we can go wrong or go bad as men.

12:05 Culture has been trying to point out

12:06 this toxic masculinity challenge.

12:09 I think most of it, I agree with you, 100%

12:12 has not been helpful.

12:12 I think it's caused men to stop considering

12:14 what it means to become better.

12:15 I think this focus on external things or imagining

12:18 that we could improve men by marketing campaigns

12:20 and slogans has been more destructive

12:22 than it's been helpful.

12:23 But there's an opposite air you have to also watch out for.

12:26 And that is in a kind of defensive reaction.

12:28 I'm not in this camp of the American Psychological Association.

12:32 But in a reaction to that,

12:33 you can become overindulgent in raw masculinity

12:37 or raw masculine in sorts that your hope

12:39 and your salvation is just with wild abandon,

12:41 to indulge and never consider or think.

12:44 So what I think men should be doing

12:45 is trying to find that better way that says,

12:48 how do I take the masculinity that I have seriously,

12:51 this raw material of manhood?

12:53 And how do I become intentional about maturing that

12:55 into the best possible manhood that it could be

12:58 that can serve and bear responsibility?

13:00 Well, and the thing that concerns me the most is

13:02 our culture and too often the church as well

13:05 has robbed men of that path by which they grow

13:08 to become better.

13:08 We focus everything on externals, on expectations,

13:11 on marketing campaigns and slogans.

13:13 And we never just say to a man,

13:15 here's what it looks like to become better,

13:17 which is I think what most of us are after.

13:19 The reason I think so many men aren't asking that question,

13:22 'cause I think you do position it well.

13:23 Men aren't getting up and even thinking about it.

13:26 Well, number one, because we've set the cultural bar

13:28 so low, don't be surprised when men rise to the low bar, right?

13:31 We have zero expectation of the men,

13:33 or we think they're dangerous.

13:35 But the other part of it is,

13:35 I think a lot of men are experiencing what I call malaise.

13:39 There's this great line in a novel by Percy Walker

13:42 who says that Walker Percy, excuse me,

13:44 who says that men are dead, dead, dead,

13:48 and the malaise has come like a fallout.

13:51 And the only thing that men fear more than the bomb falling,

13:53 he's writing in the atomic age of the 50s and 60s.

13:56 The only thing men fear more than the bomb falling

13:58 is that the bomb won't fall,

14:00 and we're left to fall prey to desire.

14:02 I've always loved that idea that the only thing

14:05 that we fear more than catastrophe,

14:07 the nuclear fallout than war,

14:09 the only thing that is more terrifying than that

14:12 is that nothing would happen,

14:14 that nothing in life would ever be meaningful,

14:16 that we would never be challenged

14:17 to do anything meaningful in life.

14:20 And if there is nothing meaningful,

14:21 if there is no purpose,

14:23 if there is no right or wrong, or moral calling,

14:25 or better manhood we can grow into,

14:28 then what do we have left as men,

14:29 but to just fall prey to desire,

14:31 to just indulge those raw bare instincts?

14:34 That's where I think a lot of men are today.

14:35 There's zero expectations of them.

14:37 There's no longer a sense of right or wrong,

14:39 or calling, or purpose in life.

14:41 There's no responsibility that isn't belittled by our culture.

14:45 So a lot of us just settle into this malaise

14:47 as the way men are, and we stop trying,

14:49 we stop caring, we check out,

14:50 and we just indulge desire.

14:52 Or we settle into crushing our hobbies,

14:55 and so being really, really good at golf,

14:56 or really, really good at jujitsu,

14:57 or really, really good at lifting weights,

14:59 or running or whatever.

15:00 And so I had Pastor Joby Martin on my show earlier this year,

15:02 and he basically talked about,

15:04 "Hey, I like going hunting and eating meat,

15:06 "and driving four-wheel drive,

15:07 "and watching college football."

15:08 He's like, "None of those things make me a man.

15:10 "They make me awesome.

15:11 "They don't make me a man."

15:12 I was like, "Yeah, but I 100% agree with that sentiment.

15:15 "The problem with most guys is they don't go that extra degree.

15:17 "They do kind of do a univariate analysis of their life."

15:19 And they're like, "Well, I'm really good at being a fan

15:21 "of this college football team.

15:22 "So I'm gonna put all of my desire and attention

15:24 "and focus into that,

15:25 "and then it becomes part of their identity.

15:27 "But I'm gonna kind of blow up my interview cadence here

15:30 "a little bit and kind of skip to something at the end,

15:31 "because you brought it up there.

15:33 "The church has done men absolutely no favors.

15:36 "I just had Frank Turkle not that long ago."

15:38 He's like, "Look, the church was not made for men.

15:40 "The modern church has not made for men.

15:42 "It's made for women.

15:43 "And then male pastors lament

15:45 "that there aren't more men in the church."

15:46 Well, it's like your sermon content

15:48 is basically built for the women.

15:50 I'm not saying you necessarily,

15:51 I've never been in your church,

15:52 but the sermon content is kind of based for women.

15:55 It's talking way more about the Lamb of God

15:57 and not talking at all about line of Judae.

16:00 It's way more about grace,

16:01 almost nothing about truth.

16:02 The lyrical content of the songs

16:04 that we tell these men to sing and in the key,

16:07 we ask them to sing it in, doesn't really match them.

16:09 And then they're the ones sitting there

16:11 basically pointed out on Father's Day saying,

16:13 "You're the problem.

16:14 "You don't like worship music,

16:15 "so you're probably not safe.

16:17 "You don't like volunteering at the church,

16:19 "so you're probably not safe."

16:20 And most guys are like, "F this guy, F this nonsense.

16:23 "I'm gonna go to the shooting range.

16:25 "I'm gonna go play basketball.

16:26 "I'm gonna go tinker with the lawnmower.

16:29 "I'm not gonna be in church.

16:30 "Church has spent hundreds of years repelling men,

16:32 "and yet they still feel like they have this ability

16:35 "to tell men how they've got it wrong.

16:37 "Have I got it wrong here?

16:38 "What do you think?"

16:39 - No, well, in the flip side,

16:41 the thing I often see that gets me discouraged too,

16:43 is when churches do try to reach men,

16:44 it slips into this kind of awkward caricature, right?

16:47 So it's like, I call it beards, bacon,

16:49 and blowing things up that--

16:50 - Which are all awesome, by the way.

16:51 When you mention it in your book,

16:52 I'm like, "Don't you dare catch those things."

16:54 It's negative.

16:55 - Well, look, I've got some facial hair,

16:56 so I'm obviously in the club too.

16:58 But my issue is, if you tell men that faith in Christianity

17:03 is basically just about these sort of like stock,

17:06 if I throw bacon on a postcard and send it to you,

17:08 then you're gonna come and start participating in church.

17:11 I think we're contributing to that setting

17:12 the bar too low for men.

17:14 I think we need to be saying to men that,

17:16 look, number one, creation.

17:19 God made male and female and called them both good.

17:22 There is something inherently good in being a man,

17:25 that God has made you a man for purpose and reason

17:28 and called it good.

17:29 And it is a responsibility that you've been called

17:32 to take up and to grow into Christ's likeness,

17:34 that you becoming a better man means pursuing

17:37 and becoming like Christ.

17:38 And that doesn't mean denying being a man,

17:40 it means forming it into something better.

17:42 And that raises the bar to say to men,

17:45 we need more out of you.

17:46 We need you to be serving families.

17:48 We need you to be serving communities

17:50 to be a husband and a father.

17:52 But that work primarily is internal work.

17:55 It's not these sort of just external show up

17:57 and we're gonna do some manly stuff.

18:00 So yeah, I think there's a balance here.

18:01 This is another one of those areas

18:02 where I think we've actually made both extreme mistakes.

18:04 We have created a church environment

18:07 that men don't feel comfortable, welcome, valued, challenged,

18:11 or we've gone the opposite extreme

18:12 where we've given them this shallow version of manhood

18:15 where it's like, look, if church is just about

18:18 Beardsbake and employing things up,

18:19 like I can find that anywhere, right?

18:21 Like I can have that at home.

18:22 I need something in a church experience

18:24 that's going to challenge me to become better,

18:26 to grow, to develop better virtue in character

18:29 and offer me a path to something that I can't find elsewhere.

18:33 I'm definitely not finding in the world.

18:35 I know that I can't find on my own.

18:38 So I think there's a lot of work for churches to do

18:40 in avoiding both of those extremes.

18:41 It's almost like demanding.

18:43 And you hear people will say this about modern churches,

18:45 especially mega churches,

18:46 is like they're trying so desperately

18:48 to be like the culture that hates them.

18:50 And so it's like, if people walk into your church

18:53 and it feels exactly like their everyday life,

18:55 you're probably not going to get

18:56 that overwhelming gospel change of somebody's heart

18:59 because if the music sounds the same,

19:01 if it sounds like the last 10 TED talks

19:02 that they've listened to,

19:03 there's nothing different about the offering

19:06 that these people are getting.

19:07 But I do think I have a little bit of a concern

19:10 about kind of that middle of the road approach.

19:13 And so we're still early in your book here

19:14 because I've messed up my own interview,

19:16 but there's another quote very, very early in the book.

19:18 It's this, the goal of this book

19:19 is not to annihilate your masculine instincts

19:22 or to pull them back to some safer middle ground.

19:26 Now, when you mentioned the middle ground there,

19:28 the one thing that's interesting

19:29 about your book chases, especially in the early chapters,

19:32 I had no idea what to think of your opinion

19:35 because you kept describing A and B,

19:37 left and right, blue and red.

19:39 You were driving me insane.

19:41 I was literally writing in the margins of my book.

19:43 What does this guy believe?

19:44 Where are you?

19:44 What does he do?

19:45 And really for the most of the beginning of the book,

19:47 you just seem to be splitting the baby

19:49 and not taking a strong definitive stance on anything

19:52 which drives a guy like me nuts

19:53 because I either want to know if you're with me

19:55 or you're against me.

19:55 I can't deal kind of with the luke warmness.

19:58 So kind of help me with that

19:59 because you say the goal of the book is not to annihilate that,

20:01 to not have middle ground.

20:03 And yet you seem to be playing the middle ground

20:05 for a majority of the book.

20:07 Yeah, so I'm always nervous

20:08 about the middle ground approach too.

20:10 That there's a safe space in the middle.

20:12 I don't think that's helpful.

20:12 Like I think you do at some point

20:15 have to decide what you believe.

20:16 I think there is another way.

20:18 So I don't see it what I'm trying to do with the book

20:20 as a middle ground,

20:21 that I'm trying to be some mediocre center

20:24 to these two extremes.

20:25 I think both extremes are primarily the same problem.

20:29 They're focused on external characteristics of men.

20:32 They're focused on external behavior of men

20:35 and they're trying to solve those problems

20:36 with external conversations, with external expectations.

20:40 I'm trying to suggest in the book

20:42 that neither of those actually help men get better,

20:45 that the way men actually grow and become better men

20:48 is by, I use a little piece of advice

20:50 that the Apostle Paul gives the young man Timothy

20:52 who was pastoring in a really difficult place in Ephesus.

20:55 And he tells Timothy, you'll make progress

20:57 and you'll save both yourself and your hearers,

20:59 which is responsibility language, right?

21:01 You'll bear responsibility well for those you're leading.

21:04 And the two pieces of advice Paul gives him is

21:06 if you learn to pay close attention to your life

21:09 and close attention to the teaching,

21:10 the doctrine, what you have in Christ.

21:13 I don't think that's a middle way.

21:14 I think that's a different way of pursuing Godly manhood,

21:18 which is I'm gonna pay close attention to my instincts,

21:21 my motives, my desires.

21:23 What is causing me to do the things that I'm doing?

21:25 Why am I behaving the way that I'm behaving?

21:28 It's not enough to just say,

21:29 here's how men are behaving wrongly

21:31 or here's how men behave well.

21:33 You eventually have to push that conversation

21:35 down to a deeper point to say,

21:37 why is it those particular temptations,

21:39 those particular challenges,

21:41 those particular broken behaviors?

21:43 And then you have to also keep a close watch

21:46 on what you have through Christ by faith

21:48 'cause you need something bigger than yourself.

21:50 If you make your sense of identity and manhood,

21:52 just in inner search, I'm gonna go into myself

21:55 and I'm gonna find my true identity, my true self.

21:57 You'll just get lost in that,

21:58 you're never gonna live up to those things.

22:00 You're never gonna become who you wanna be.

22:01 There's not enough inside of you.

22:03 You've gotta have something bigger,

22:04 which is what you have through the power of the gospel.

22:07 But if you allow your life

22:08 to become just the pursuit of gospel knowledge,

22:11 theological definitions, postures of the correct opinion,

22:15 and that doesn't ever work itself into the depths

22:17 of who you are as a person.

22:19 It doesn't transform the inner life of who you are,

22:21 then you equally end up lost.

22:23 You end up kind of a facade,

22:25 just a front of spirituality.

22:27 So I wanna push back a little too and say,

22:29 I think I'm trying to offer something entirely different.

22:32 You ask at the beginning, why did I write this book?

22:34 Look, I'm not, I don't wake up every morning and say,

22:35 I wanna be a men's author, I wanna write to men.

22:37 I've got a whole congregation,

22:39 all sorts of problems, things I care about,

22:40 I wanna write about.

22:41 I wrote this book because I don't think men

22:43 have this approach in the conversation at all.

22:46 The only conversation taking place is external.

22:49 And I wanna help men begin to explore

22:51 what does it look like to grow internally as a man?

22:54 What does it look like to begin to cultivate character?

22:57 Because I'm convinced when that character

22:59 begins to form within you.

23:00 When you begin to cultivate inner strength and virtue,

23:03 discipline internally, that sense of manhood

23:06 that you're looking for,

23:08 it comes as a byproduct of that work.

23:10 The last chapter of the book is entitled,

23:12 "Nothing Left to Proof."

23:14 So much of manhood feels like it's about trying

23:16 to prove something to myself and everyone else around me.

23:19 When I think about the men that I respect most of my life,

23:22 the men who I think, that's the kind of manhood I want,

23:25 the kind of father I wanna be, the kind of husband I wanna be,

23:28 they're not the men who feel like they're running around

23:30 having to prove it to everyone.

23:32 Doesn't mean they're weak, a lot of them

23:33 are incredibly strong discipline.

23:35 But there's something internally in them

23:37 that I look at and say, I want that kind of security,

23:41 I want that kind of confidence,

23:43 I want that kind of strength and discipline

23:45 that doesn't have to prove it or put it on display,

23:48 but knows that it's there.

23:50 That's the thing that I'm after,

23:51 that I think it's not a middle ground,

23:53 but an entirely different attention and pursuit.

23:56 - I think it's the difference between false posturing

23:58 and the external manifestation of an internal work

24:03 that's been done.

24:04 And so there's the guy that's always the loud mouth

24:07 at the bar, that if you know how to fight,

24:09 you know that guy doesn't know how to fight.

24:11 That's why he's peacocking.

24:13 That's why he's like, who wants to go outside?

24:15 It's the dudes that know how to fight that are like,

24:17 oh man, I really hope this guy doesn't come over here.

24:20 Like I'm gonna have to kill him.

24:22 And it's that, it's that, you know, meek to response

24:24 and we'll get into meekness.

24:25 So I'm not gonna mess up my interview too much.

24:27 That's kind of the other thing, you know, with centrism,

24:30 independence politically or people that say,

24:32 oh, I'm a centrist.

24:33 It's like, well, you just haven't really thought

24:34 through the issues enough to have a fully fledged opinion.

24:36 And so it's like at some point,

24:37 you have to hop off the fence.

24:39 But where the rubber really starts to meet the road

24:40 with your book is where you bring up Shakespeare

24:42 and you bring up a play that I had never really

24:44 been familiar with as you like it.

24:47 And in that play kind of defines the stages of a man

24:49 and there's seven stages,

24:51 but you kind of lop off the beginning and the end.

24:52 And you focus on the five stages in the middle.

24:55 And those were sarcasm, adventure, ambition, reputation

24:59 and apathy.

25:00 So sarcasm, adventure, ambition, reputation and apathy.

25:03 And you attach to each one of those to a biblical character.

25:07 So you attach sarcasm to Cain, the reluctant school boy,

25:10 adventure to Samson, the wandering adventurer.

25:13 Moses, the frustration by, he was frustrated by ambition.

25:17 Yeah, David, who was desperate to protect his reputation.

25:20 And then he had Abraham who was tested by his own

25:23 disengagement and apathy.

25:24 That's kind of how you couch all those different things.

25:26 So I guess, why did you key in on those guys?

25:29 Why did you key in on those characteristics?

25:31 Because to be honest, this is the first Christian manhood book

25:34 and look, I've got an entire library of them right here

25:37 to my right.

25:38 No one's ever really mentioned Shakespeare

25:39 unless it's kind of a cool quote or, you know,

25:42 once more into the breach, dear friends kind of a thing.

25:44 So why did you kind of go the Shakespearean route

25:47 and then kind of turn it into a biblical lesson?

25:50 Yeah, so Shakespeare is remembered

25:52 as one of the great psychological writers.

25:53 He's trying to deal with human nature.

25:55 He's trying to expose human nature.

25:58 I think it's interesting that he describes these stages

26:00 in a man's life that he recognized.

26:02 The first and the last are birth and death.

26:04 He tries to make the point that as we come into the world

26:06 dependent on someone's care,

26:07 we tend to leave the world dependent on someone's care.

26:10 And in the middle, you get these images

26:12 of from a school boy age on to what we might call retirement,

26:16 a man across these stages of his life.

26:19 I recognized really early those stages at work

26:21 within myself, but also the men that I pastor.

26:24 And as a pastor, one of the things you recognize

26:26 is that two men could commit the same sin.

26:28 Two men could lie, two men could steal,

26:32 two men could be addicted to pornography,

26:36 but they could be doing those behaviors

26:38 for different reasons or different motivations.

26:40 It's not as simple as just to say,

26:42 well, that's the sin I struggle with.

26:43 At some point you dig deeper and you begin to recognize

26:46 there are these instincts that work within us.

26:49 Lewis defined, C.S. Lewis defined an instinct as behavior

26:53 as if from knowledge.

26:55 So your behavior oftentimes is driven by an instinct

26:59 that to you seems like common sense,

27:01 that seems obvious, that seems natural,

27:04 when in reality you've probably never considered

27:06 why you're doing those things

27:08 or what is motivating those things.

27:10 The philosopher Nietzsche said that an instinct is weakened

27:13 when you force it to rationalize itself.

27:16 So in other words, when you begin to ask tough questions

27:18 about why do I do the things that I do?

27:20 Why do I behave the way that I behave?

27:23 The instinct loses some of its power

27:25 to drive you and control you.

27:27 And through that perspective,

27:28 you become the master of those instincts

27:31 instead of being mastered by them.

27:33 So Shakespeare for me was a tool

27:35 of being able to help men ask deeper questions

27:38 about what is currently motivating my behavior.

27:41 And I think it's always important to point out

27:42 the five instincts that I cover in the book.

27:44 These are not the five expectations of men

27:46 that you have to have these to qualify as a man,

27:49 nor are these the five sins of men

27:51 that watch out for those things.

27:53 Certainly things like adventure and ambition

27:55 and reputation, I mean, these are good things,

27:57 all of them I think are at worst neutral,

27:59 but I think all of them have a positive part to them.

28:02 But when they become driving controlling forces

28:05 in your life that you have no perspective on,

28:08 when they're driving behavior,

28:09 which without your awareness

28:11 of how they're leading to your behavior,

28:13 then I think the biblical stories help us recognize

28:15 that even those good things can become ultimate things,

28:18 can become things that lead towards destruction

28:20 and a kind of blind indulgence

28:22 that makes us weaker and more vulnerable because of it.

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28:53 - Yeah, and it's less of a,

28:54 well, at least this was my perception when I was reading it,

28:56 it's less of a checklist and more of a,

28:57 where are you at, stage wise?

28:59 Like are you in this stage of life

29:00 or are you in that stage of life?

29:02 Now, I do want to talk about something

29:03 in the first chapter where you go into this

29:05 and that's cane and sarcasm,

29:06 but I don't want to spend a lot of time on this

29:07 because you also talk about meekness in that chapter

29:09 and that was like one of my favorite parts of the entire book.

29:12 But I've got to be honest,

29:12 'cause I was reading the first part of the cane chapter.

29:15 I really didn't get your point or that

29:18 or maybe I just disagreed with it

29:20 and it just didn't really kind of go through my brain.

29:22 I tell people all the time,

29:23 I don't have the intellect to lightly toast a piece of bread.

29:25 So it's like sometimes I might just miss it.

29:27 But the chapter seemed to me,

29:29 like someone who is bad at sarcasm,

29:31 castigating it is improper.

29:33 It's kind of like people that suck at comedy.

29:35 They love to point at comedians

29:36 and tell them that their stuff isn't funny.

29:38 And so it's like, I mean, there was one quote from the book.

29:40 It was like sarcasm is usually a sign of immaturity

29:43 and when threatened, it is an instinct

29:45 to avoid responsibility.

29:46 And there are more quotes like that throughout that section.

29:48 But there are people that are really good at sarcasm

29:51 and comedy and razzing and being quick-witted

29:53 and all those different things.

29:55 And they're just doing it

29:56 because it's an overflow of their personality.

29:58 Now there are people that do those things

30:00 because they're insecure or that's kind of their way

30:02 of being a bully and there are different things like that.

30:05 But ultimately I didn't,

30:07 I guess I didn't really get why

30:08 that was kind of the kicking off point

30:10 of your five masculine instincts going into sarcasm.

30:15 It just didn't really land with me.

30:16 So help me a little bit.

30:17 - I'll keep it quick.

30:18 So all of these instincts, I say, can be good things.

30:21 It'll make you happy to know,

30:22 I think the Old Testament prophets often use sarcasm

30:25 as a tool to draw out truth.

30:27 I think Jesus at times is sarcastic with his critics.

30:30 So I'm certainly not hostile to sarcasm in any way.

30:32 By the way, it is fine to have a sarcastic joke and laugh.

30:36 I'm not calling out any sarcasm in your life.

30:38 But I think you and I both also know

30:40 that there is a kind of man

30:41 who has a kind of perpetual immaturity

30:43 that can't take anything seriously,

30:46 that makes everything a joke

30:47 as a way of avoiding having to be serious.

30:50 And I use Cain's story because God comes down

30:52 and initiates a conversation with Cain

30:54 about how Cain needs to grow

30:56 and overcome the challenge of sin before it conquers him.

31:00 Cain doesn't respond to that conversation,

31:01 rises up and murders his brother

31:03 out of frustration and bitterness.

31:05 And then when God comes back to him a second time,

31:07 he says, "Where's your brother Abel?"

31:09 And Cain says to him, "Am I my brother's keeper?"

31:12 There's a kind of sarcasm at work within Cain

31:14 that's just a cheap veneer for covering up his contempt.

31:17 And it's that contempt and the sarcasm,

31:19 the cleverness that he imagines

31:21 with which he shows that contempt to God

31:24 that keeps him from recognizing the divine lesson,

31:26 the way in which God is trying to lead him to become better.

31:29 So I use the first chapter just to say,

31:32 be careful that in your making everything a joke

31:36 and everything being sarcastic

31:37 and everything being dumb and not worth your time,

31:40 you're not actually missing some of the opportunities

31:42 that God is using to grow you and challenge you

31:45 and lead you down a path of growth and improvement.

31:48 - Okay, fair enough.

31:49 I appreciate you going a little bit further into that.

31:50 But again, like I've teed up now three times,

31:53 you talked about meekness in this chapter

31:54 and I've seen, you know what I'm gonna do?

31:56 I'm gonna make you wait on the meekness thing

31:57 'cause I wanna make another point

31:59 because I feel like meekness chase

32:01 started to change inside Christendom

32:04 as soon as Jordan Peterson started talking about it.

32:07 And so you actually quote Jordan Peterson

32:08 at the beginning of one of your chapters,

32:09 I don't even think it was that chapter,

32:11 but his influence as a non-Christian

32:14 'cause he's not a Christian

32:14 by any stretch of the imagination

32:16 no matter what category you look at it as,

32:18 this is a non-Christian that is having a deeply profound

32:20 and positive impact on Christendom, at least in my opinion.

32:24 And he started talking about meekness

32:26 kind of being a knight that has a sword

32:29 but leaves it sheathed, right?

32:31 This tremendous amount of power under control.

32:34 So talk to me a little bit about Jordan Peterson

32:36 and kind of your understanding of his impact

32:39 that we're having on the church.

32:40 And then we'll finally get to talking about meekness specifically.

32:42 - Yeah, happy to do it.

32:43 So I've written on my blog a couple times about Peterson's work.

32:46 I actually have found it to be incredibly helpful.

32:49 I think the work he's doing as you put it

32:50 has been a huge benefit to the church,

32:53 to men in the church in particular.

32:55 I think where he and I probably win,

32:57 which we go a long ways together,

33:00 where we probably have some sort of a difference

33:02 is he has more of a classical approach to virtue,

33:05 which is that virtue and character are a habit

33:07 that we take, we begin to practice

33:10 as a way of forming in our life.

33:11 That's the traditional like how Plato

33:13 would have taught character formation as well too.

33:16 I think as a Christian,

33:17 there's a way in which character can be infused

33:20 into your life through the gospel,

33:22 that the gospel narrative itself has a kind of power

33:25 that so radically changes the way you see the world

33:28 in yourself, that it creates within you

33:31 some of that character in virtue.

33:33 I don't think Peterson quite gets to that point.

33:35 I think he sees the value of Christian teaching

33:37 as a tool that you can use to start practicing

33:40 that character in virtue,

33:42 where I think if you really begin to submit your life

33:44 to Christ and the narrative, the truth of the gospel,

33:46 it actually infuses some of that character in virtue

33:49 into your life as well.

33:50 So yeah, I think like you,

33:52 and largely I find Peterson's work to be immensely helpful

33:55 and fascinating and he's bringing a psychological read

33:58 and he'll straight up say that

33:59 when he's talking about the Bible,

34:01 he's reading it as a psychologist

34:03 and trying to look for the psychological themes.

34:05 I tend to focus on the narrative themes as a writer,

34:08 how I think the stories are functioning,

34:10 but yeah, he's been insightful

34:11 and so many times even in my own reading of scripture as well.

34:14 - I think his intellect has gotten him close to God,

34:16 but also I think intellect will be one of his stumbling blocks

34:19 because again, I was just talking this morning

34:21 with a guy who's a young earth guy,

34:22 and for me personally like I think it's silly

34:25 to think that God would create an old appearing earth

34:30 and then give us the tools by which to define using physics

34:33 or biology or whatever, to say how old the earth is

34:36 only to trick us to be like ah, it's not really that old,

34:39 it's only this old.

34:40 And so I feel like when you start getting bogged down

34:42 in some of the scientific arguments,

34:43 that's where I think Jordan Peterson is thinking,

34:45 okay, this has value because of what it does about truth,

34:48 but I don't know that I can believe in it

34:50 because of all these other things.

34:52 But anyway, it'll be interesting to see

34:53 kind of how he develops moving forward.

34:56 But again, you talk about meekness.

34:57 I've teated up now four times or five times in this podcast.

35:00 So what do we get wrong in modernity

35:02 as Christians or a secular people about meekness?

35:05 - Yeah, so meekness comes up in this Cain chapter.

35:08 And what strikes me about Cain and his immaturity

35:10 is his inability to control his reactions.

35:13 God rejects his sacrifice and comes down

35:16 and gives him an opportunity to understand

35:18 why his sacrifice was rejected.

35:20 But instead what Cain does is he impulsively reacts

35:23 and murders his brother.

35:24 It's as if he cannot stomach having been challenged

35:27 or judged in some way and his natural impulses

35:31 to react to respond.

35:33 You described this earlier by a guy in a bar

35:35 who's the one talking all the time

35:37 and everybody recognizes that's not a sign of his strength.

35:40 It's a sign of his insecurity.

35:41 It's a sign of his weakness.

35:43 I think there is often this need to react

35:46 to put things on display, to show,

35:49 is often not a sign of strength but a sign of weakness.

35:52 And meekness is not a word that any of us

35:54 would claim for ourselves.

35:55 I sort of will say, what politician

35:58 has ever put on their yard sign?

35:59 I vote for me, I'm a meek candidate, right?

36:02 We would look at that and think,

36:03 that's the last thing I want in a person.

36:05 But it's because we've misunderstood

36:06 what meekness actually is.

36:08 We think of it as timidity or weakness.

36:10 When in reality, the Greek writers,

36:12 even before the New Testament,

36:14 we're using the word meekness to describe war horses.

36:17 My wife and I have a couple of horses.

36:19 I've got a big quarter horse.

36:20 And these war horses that they would train,

36:23 the goal was you couldn't break their spirit entirely.

36:26 If you made them so passive and so domesticated,

36:30 they would become useless in battle.

36:32 You needed a horse who was willing to charge cannon fire

36:34 and to jump over lines of enemies with spears.

36:37 You need to, those wild characteristics of that horse

36:40 need to still be there.

36:42 But to be a horse that the Greeks would have called meek,

36:44 a battle horse, you needed to also have

36:46 the discipline necessary that a writer

36:49 with the gesture of a knee and its side

36:51 can cut that horse in an entirely new direction.

36:54 If you've ever been around horses,

36:55 it's always amazed me, an animal of that power and strength,

36:58 when they're well-trained and disciplined,

36:59 could almost anticipate what the writer is asking.

37:02 They can sense that from the subtlest gestures

37:04 of you as a writer.

37:06 One of the other images I like to use for meekness,

37:08 so the horse is all of the wildness,

37:10 all of the strength of a wild horse

37:12 but brought into the discipline of control.

37:15 The other one that I like to use is a boxer.

37:17 If you watch boxing or a UFC fight,

37:19 we don't just measure the strength of the fighter

37:22 by their ability to throw a punch.

37:24 We also will measure their strength

37:26 by the ability to take one, to absorb one.

37:28 I watch a guy get round after round

37:30 and I think that's a tough guy.

37:32 It's not just his ability to throw the punch.

37:34 That's a good way of thinking about meekness.

37:36 That meekness is able to absorb a blow

37:39 and not out of immaturity react out of control,

37:43 but instead to be able to absorb that blow,

37:46 to consider the right response if a response is necessary

37:50 and to measure out that response in a controlled way.

37:53 That is actually a mark of strength

37:55 and it's the thing that we're being called to

37:57 when it says, "Blessed are the meek,"

37:59 or when Moses is described as the meekest man on earth,

38:02 not weakness, not timidity,

38:04 but a kind of inner strength, a kind of character

38:07 that can look out at the world

38:08 that can be wronged by somebody,

38:10 that can be attacked by somebody,

38:12 and consider in a moment,

38:14 what is the right way to respond to this?

38:15 Is this even worth responding to?

38:17 Does it necessitate a response?

38:19 Is there something that I could actually learn,

38:21 like maybe God is using this towards something better in me?

38:24 That's a better image of meekness,

38:26 and I think it's actually a characteristic of strength.

38:29 - Yeah, it's like it's having tremendous strength

38:30 under voluntary control.

38:32 You mentioned a UFC fight.

38:33 So there was a story, Cowboy Saroni,

38:35 who's one of the most famous

38:37 and most well-liked fighters of all time.

38:39 He's coming towards the end of his career,

38:40 but this was years ago.

38:42 I think he may have accidentally cut someone off in traffic

38:45 and then he pulls over

38:46 and is walking into the store or whatever.

38:48 And this guy doesn't know who Cowboy Saroni is.

38:51 Gets out and doesn't even say anything.

38:52 Just punches him in the face.

38:54 He punches Cowboy Saroni in the face.

38:56 And as the story goes,

38:57 and I have no reason to believe that this didn't happen,

38:59 Cowboy said, "That was your free one.

39:01 "You will not get another."

39:03 And just stared at him.

39:05 And you want to talk about meekness.

39:07 This is Cowboy Saroni,

39:08 one of the most dangerous human beings to ever live.

39:12 And he just said that--

39:13 - By the way, he's probably also angry.

39:14 Like you don't get punched in the face

39:16 by sure in your trap.

39:16 Like it's not that he is,

39:18 what he is cultivated is not stoic emotionlessness,

39:22 that somehow he just is above it all.

39:24 No, no, no, he feels the anger,

39:25 but there's enough discipline in his inner life

39:28 to not have to react out of anger,

39:30 but to make a decision how he will respond in that moment.

39:33 - When he didn't in that moment need to beat that guy up

39:35 to prove something to his father

39:37 or prove something to that girlfriend

39:39 that spurned him whenever they were in college,

39:41 he didn't have any of that misguided angst,

39:44 that manly angst to where it was just like,

39:46 bro, it's basically gonna be a horrible rest of your day.

39:49 And you should just know by my countenance

39:51 'cause I just ate that punch and I'm still here,

39:54 but you don't get another one.

39:55 So I really, really like that story.

39:56 I think that kind of makes your point.

39:57 So moving on to the chapter about Samson and adventure.

40:00 I want to say this quick quote here.

40:02 Maybe the meaninglessness and boredom

40:04 are exactly what real adventures are meant to feel like.

40:08 So I know it sounds like I may be disagreeing with you a lot,

40:11 but I'm just trying to understand your point of view

40:13 'cause I feel like you and I are kind of wired

40:14 a little bit differently mentally.

40:16 And it seems like you're advocating for men

40:19 to just kind of accept the mundane nature

40:22 of much of their lives.

40:23 And I think that leads, that mundane nature

40:26 really leads a lot of men directly into despair.

40:29 They're a man that I know very, very well personally

40:32 that have worked kind of the same job

40:34 for a very, very long time.

40:35 They never took vacations, they never took risks,

40:38 they never got outside their box.

40:39 And so, you know, even reading Wild at Heart

40:42 by my man, John Eldridge,

40:43 like that's not going to be enough

40:44 to get them out of the recliner.

40:46 But then it leads to this depression.

40:48 It leads to them not having a foxhole of guys around them

40:50 that can really support them.

40:52 And so it's like, it seemed like you were advocating

40:55 for men to look at the mundane nature of their life

40:58 and be like, that's probably okay.

41:00 Whereas I'm like, that's probably not.

41:02 It's probably going to lead to some negative outcomes.

41:04 So go.

41:05 - Yep, so this is why it's so important

41:07 to talk about more than one instinct.

41:09 And it's why it's important that we started the conversation

41:11 by saying you have to learn to pay attention

41:13 to your life and your instincts

41:15 and what's motivating your behavior.

41:17 Because in some ways,

41:18 the opposite of this adventure instinct

41:20 is the apathy one at the end.

41:22 There is a kind of man who is so apathetic

41:24 and so disengaged and so risk averse

41:28 that his faith withers and dies,

41:29 that he stops living a life of faith.

41:32 And we need to come along.

41:33 In that story of Abraham at the end,

41:35 God wakes him up by challenging him

41:37 to make an unbelievable sacrifice

41:39 as a way of pulling him back into what you could call

41:42 this adventurous narrative

41:44 that life has stakes and consequences and requires movement.

41:47 There is a certain kind of man

41:48 that needs to be woken up to that narrative of life

41:51 that you need to take risks, your faith needs to be active.

41:54 When I write specifically about Samson

41:56 and this instinct of adventure,

41:58 there's another kind of man who is so obsessed with adventure

42:02 that believes by leaving home and place and tradition

42:05 and all of the things holding them back

42:06 that they can go and find their better identity

42:09 and their true self in some sort of epic quest.

42:12 Oftentimes what happens is you weaken your commitment

42:15 to place, to spouse, to children.

42:18 And through that process,

42:19 you don't end up enlightened and actualized and discerning.

42:23 You become less discerning.

42:24 That's what happens in Samson's story.

42:26 Samson is at a time in Israel's history

42:28 where there's nothing great happening.

42:29 There's no army, there's no temple,

42:31 there's no kingdom or power.

42:33 It grazed as a Nazarite, no cutting your hair,

42:37 no touching corpse, no drinking wine.

42:39 He didn't pick that for himself.

42:40 An angel gave that restriction to his mother.

42:42 So he's growing up in kind of a backwards place

42:45 at a low point in Israel's history

42:46 with this weird family tradition.

42:48 It's no surprise that he finds himself fascinated

42:50 with Philistia, all these great Philistine cities with wealth.

42:54 They're having these technological innovations

42:56 and metal at the time from bronze and to iron.

42:59 And he becomes obsessed.

43:00 And story after story, Samson goes down to Philistia

43:03 in these little adventure stories.

43:04 He takes these huge risks, the spirit empowers him

43:07 with this miraculous strength to deliver himself.

43:10 And through those stories, does Samson become

43:13 more self-actualized, more discerning?

43:15 Does he sense his truer identity and purpose?

43:18 That's the exact opposite.

43:19 He loses more and more of who he actually is.

43:22 He loses that sense of discernment.

43:23 And he becomes dull.

43:25 He ends up taking those divine experiences of strength

43:28 and literally at one point he's gambling it away as a pun

43:31 and a drunken feast with Philistines, right?

43:33 And he ends up with his head shaved and his eyes gouged out

43:36 and chained to a wall in one of these Philistine dungeons.

43:39 It doesn't lead to self-actualization.

43:42 So what I think we need as men,

43:44 it's not don't ever go on an adventure

43:46 or don't ever do anything adventurous.

43:47 Don't think of your life as having adventurous stakes

43:50 and meaning, certainly that's fine.

43:52 But don't allow your desperation

43:54 for the adventure you're imagining to dull you

43:58 and make you less discerning of the things God

44:00 has at work doing it in your life when you imagine them boring

44:03 or less than adventurous.

44:05 And sometimes that is a job.

44:06 Sometimes that's a relationship

44:07 that maybe hasn't worked itself out like you imagined

44:10 or it's raising kids.

44:11 Man, there's so much monotony.

44:13 I've got two young ones myself.

44:14 Like that doesn't always feel adventurous.

44:17 But the challenge is, how do you discern the fact

44:19 that God is doing something in those places?

44:22 And how do you become wiser in discerning that work

44:25 instead of constantly pursuing your own adventure

44:27 and actually losing what God is at work doing

44:30 in that place right now?

44:32 - Well, something that struck me as you were talking, Chase,

44:33 is God has you, where he has you for a reason.

44:36 But some guys, they think that

44:38 so that they don't have to go and do something else,

44:41 that they don't have to spark themselves

44:42 and motivate themselves.

44:43 They're like, oh, well, God just has me here, it's like does he?

44:45 And so like when people like, you know, during Pride Month

44:48 with all the, you know, companies changing their logos

44:50 to rainbow or during the vaccine mandates,

44:53 during all the COVID nonsense,

44:54 a lot of people reached out to me, you know, a podcast.

44:56 They say, hey, should I quit my job?

44:57 And it's like, bro, I have no freaking idea

45:00 whether or not you should do that.

45:01 I don't know. - See, those are symptoms

45:03 of we have robbed men of the ability

45:06 to look in and understand their decisions.

45:09 And when we say things like adventure, good or bad,

45:12 it's not that simple, instincts are never that simple.

45:14 Why we behave the way we do is never that simple.

45:17 We as men have got to get better at saying,

45:19 what is actually motivating my behavior?

45:22 What is motivating the things I'm feeling right now?

45:24 And have the discipline necessary to recognize

45:27 are those things good or bad

45:29 in the way that they're leading to me to behave?

45:32 If adventure is causing you to weaken your commitments

45:35 to marriage and family and place and tradition and faith,

45:38 it's destructive. - Right.

45:39 - But if you are so risk averse

45:42 that you're sitting around and retreating

45:44 into little fantasies of video games and pornography

45:47 and you're refusing to take risks in your life,

45:49 by the way, you're gonna ruin those same relationships

45:51 because of it. - Right.

45:52 - You need to wake up to life does require risk and faith

45:57 and that faith has to be active and alive

45:59 and often driving you into new places.

46:01 So it's not enough to say good or bad.

46:03 That's the thing, probably the thing that bothered you

46:05 with the book, "Feeling Like Middle Ground."

46:07 Sometimes I refuse to just say, this is good, this is bad

46:10 because it's really about you as an individual man

46:13 recognizing which of these instincts

46:15 are driving my behavior and are they leading me

46:17 towards Christ's likeness?

46:18 Or are they costing me those very things?

46:20 One of these days I hope to be sitting down with you

46:23 at a dinner where we have like a five course meal

46:24 and I'm going to force you to tell me

46:26 at each step of the way, whether you liked what you could say

46:29 or whether you didn't like what you just,

46:31 but one thing I think that would be important

46:32 for a lot of men listening to this is,

46:34 if you're thinking about making that change

46:35 or going on that adventure or doing that thing,

46:37 you need to stop and ask God, first of all,

46:39 like, is this what you have for me?

46:41 But also stop and recognize and accept your wiring

46:44 to a degree 'cause it's so easy to start a podcast

46:47 these days so everyone's doing it.

46:49 And whenever people ask me for advice

46:51 on starting a podcast, my first bit of advice is don't.

46:53 Don't start a podcast.

46:54 I was like, unless you are going to put out one episode a week

46:58 for three years before you get more than a dozen listeners,

47:01 like, you don't want to do that.

47:03 It's easy and so you think you should,

47:05 but some guys have no talent for it.

47:06 They have no skill set for being interesting.

47:08 Like, I love what Dennis Prager says is he's like,

47:11 if you think you should be in radio,

47:12 sit in a room for three hours and talk.

47:15 And if you get bored, then just understand that everybody

47:18 on the other side of the microphone is bored as well.

47:20 If you can't make yourself interesting to yourself,

47:22 you can't make yourself interesting to somebody else.

47:24 So I think there's a little bit of that internal dialogue

47:27 that you need to have.

47:28 - Yeah, self-knowledge.

47:29 - Yeah, absolutely.

47:30 And so you talked about the apathy chapter.

47:32 So let's go and skip to that with Abraham.

47:33 'Cause there was a very interesting quote that,

47:36 well, it was a brutal quote and I loved it

47:38 because it kind of gives us a sense of where we're at

47:40 and gives us maybe some scaffolding by which

47:42 to address some things societally.

47:44 So let me read the quote here.

47:45 "Men produce destruction by more than violence.

47:48 "To warn only of man's aggression is to imply

47:50 "that passivity makes him safe and virtuous.

47:53 "Nothing could be further from the truth.

47:54 "As Agatha Christie warned, a weak man in a corner

47:58 "is more dangerous than a strong man.

48:00 "I'm convinced that disengagement and apathy

48:02 "produce more destruction in the lives of men

48:04 "than aggression and violence.

48:06 "One captures most of the national headlines,

48:08 "but it is the other that lays waste to homes

48:10 "and families all over the nation.

48:12 "Men must be warned of the danger of both ditches."

48:15 So when I read that quote, I was reminded of a debate

48:18 that I did here recently with a guy named Shane Claiborne.

48:20 He's a anti-gun, anti-violence, pacifist,

48:23 kind of hippie Christian guy.

48:25 And I was on the other side of pro-second amendment,

48:28 pro self-defense and all that.

48:29 And this is a debate with a professional activist.

48:32 And I've talked about guns on two of my podcasts

48:34 out of the 300 plus podcasts that I've done.

48:36 So it was a little bit of a mismatch,

48:38 but I just kind of went in there and smashed him

48:40 because he kept wanting to talk about the instrument of evil

48:42 and not the evil that's in a man's heart.

48:44 And you talked about the national headlines.

48:46 We see that young man with misplaced anger,

48:49 in misplaced angst, and he takes out his aggression

48:52 on 19 school children in Uvalde, Texas, and two teachers.

48:56 You know, something like that.

48:57 But then we don't talk about the cultural manifestations

49:01 that allowed for that.

49:02 Like how did this kid fall through the cracks in school,

49:04 in his family?

49:05 How did he have no church life?

49:07 How did he get put on these SSRIs?

49:10 That all these school shooters seem to be on.

49:12 And so I think you start peeling back the layers of the onion,

49:15 just by phrasing things the way that you do

49:18 on that side of the chapter.

49:19 Does that kind of make sense to you, you agree with that?

49:22 - Yeah, yeah, well, I come back to,

49:23 I mean, this is something we keep returning to as well,

49:25 is that these external conversations

49:28 are not enough to fix the problem.

49:29 You can't run a marketing campaign,

49:31 or a slogan, or a protest,

49:33 and it actually change a man's soul.

49:36 At some point, he has to ask personal questions

49:38 about why do I behave the way that I do?

49:40 And at some point, he has to find something,

49:43 I believe through Christ and the power of the gospel,

49:45 that's bigger than himself to transform

49:48 and change his heart towards something better.

49:50 And it's very easy for us to set the debate up

49:53 constantly as how do we fix the problem?

49:55 How do we fix men?

49:56 What do we take away from them?

49:57 What do we put in its place?

49:58 What traits need to be removed?

50:00 And how do we leverage social campaigns

50:02 to push them in a new direction?

50:04 But I don't think it changes men.

50:06 We have a sin problem, and that sin problem

50:08 we have to be aware of, and we have to submit it to Christ

50:11 and let the power of the gospel transform us

50:14 and draw us towards greater Christ's likeness.

50:16 And until we have that conversation

50:17 about the inner life of men,

50:19 we're not gonna solve these societal problems

50:21 that we're trying to with marketing campaigns.

50:23 - I would agree, and that's what I wanted to get to,

50:25 and that was the first suggestion I made in the show

50:27 is I was like, we need to spread the gospel,

50:29 because how many gospel believing,

50:30 biblically believing Christians are going in,

50:32 shooting up elementary schools, the answer is zero, right?

50:35 So there was a quote from earlier in your book

50:37 that I kind of feel like sums up the entire,

50:40 you know, I really the entire philosophy

50:43 of the Five Masculine Instincts, and it's this,

50:46 our goal is not just to be men,

50:48 but to be men becoming more like Christ.

50:51 You just said it, Chase, he is our aim.

50:53 If there is a hero in the story, it is him alone.

50:55 There is no biblical manhood

50:57 that does not ultimately lift our eyes towards him.

51:00 That pursuit unites us and binds us

51:02 with those men and women of scripture.

51:03 We are all aiming at Christ's likeness.

51:06 That is the whole reason for writing this entire book,

51:09 in my opinion, but here's the thing

51:11 that we've gotten to in culture, Chase,

51:12 at least this is what I've seen,

51:14 is we're supposed to read the Bible as if it's about us.

51:18 I brought this up a bunch, but Matt Chandler

51:20 was invited years ago to go to Stephen Furtick's church,

51:22 and he basically went in there and burned the place down

51:24 because his entire sermon was anti-everything

51:28 that Stephen Furtick would talk about, right?

51:30 Because he was screamed at this congregation and said,

51:32 if you read the story of David and Goliath, you're not David.

51:36 That story is not about you.

51:38 The Bible is not about you, right?

51:40 God is not about you.

51:41 He is for you, but he's not about you.

51:42 He's about himself and his glory.

51:45 But we've got that so backwards

51:46 because of this kind of new-age-y,

51:49 self-help Christianity movement,

51:51 which again kind of has downstream consequences on manhood.

51:54 So just flow a little bit on how the gospel

51:57 should be the focus and whether secular or Christian,

52:00 we don't seem to be focusing on that alone.

52:02 - Yeah, the first thing that the Bible does,

52:04 and the reason I went with Old Testament characters is

52:06 the goal of the Bible is to expose you, not to affirm you.

52:10 Its job is not there to tell you you're good,

52:12 or to tell you that the things you want are good,

52:15 or to tell you just do these things and your life will go well,

52:17 it's there to show you and expose the way that your life

52:20 is geared and headed towards destruction.

52:23 That's the consistent witness across all the five of these characters.

52:24 - That sounds so mean. - Five of these characters.

52:26 - That sounds so judgmental, Chase.

52:28 Why do you mean so mean? - No, it does.

52:29 It does, until you recognize that there's a kind of grace in that,

52:33 that if I am allowed to wallow in my own self-attempts,

52:36 which by the way are not fixing men's problems,

52:38 there's not hope in that.

52:40 If the only thing that I have hope in is what I'm able to construct myself,

52:44 look, I know myself well enough to know

52:46 that myself is usually what gets in the way of something better in my life.

52:50 If my hope is in me and my abilities,

52:53 great, one day that's good, and then the next day it feels terrible.

52:56 I'm not consistently headed towards something good in my own strength.

53:00 So the gospel's willingness to expose us and show us that

53:03 ourself is not enough is actually a kind of grace

53:07 because it allows us to start looking beyond ourself.

53:10 We live in a world that's all about self-esteem and self-actualization,

53:14 self-affirmation, self-expression.

53:16 The Bible practices a form of the way I define humility of self-suspition.

53:22 I learned to recognize my first instinct, my first thought, my first opinion,

53:26 may not always be right, but I'm not left alone.

53:28 I have the revelation of God through Jesus Christ

53:31 to help challenge me and draw me towards something better than myself.

53:35 Now the key to that is you have to have the right Jesus

53:38 and you have to have the kind of Jesus that you give permission to challenge you,

53:43 to discipline you and to grow you.

53:45 If the way you're reading the Bible in the Gospels is Jesus always saying to you

53:49 what you want to hear, then you're missing the point of what Jesus is doing.

53:52 Jesus says at one point, "Blessed are those who are not offended by me."

53:57 Kierkegaard, the Danish philosopher, had this idea that the opposite of faith is not doubt.

54:02 That's how we usually frame it.

54:03 You either have faith or you're doubting.

54:05 Kierkegaard said the opposite of faith is a fence,

54:07 that when you encounter the real Jesus, you either are offended by him

54:11 because of the things he's pointing out, the things he's saying,

54:13 the things he's asking of you, or through that process, you're drawn to a greater faith.

54:18 You expose yourself and you begin to see something better in Christ.

54:22 So I think as men, you should be very careful.

54:24 The way you're reading Scripture should be challenging you.

54:27 It should be exposing you and it should be challenging you into something better through Christ.

54:31 And if the way you're reading the Bible is always, it's affirming me

54:35 and it's making me feel better about myself.

54:37 It's not just that you're misreading the Bible.

54:39 You're actually missing the real power, the real grace of what it has to offer,

54:43 which is something more than just you.

54:45 Yeah, you're getting gospel light.

54:47 And so it's like the same thing.

54:48 It's like you should not leave church feeling really, really good about yourself.

54:52 Like, and again, you can go to the extreme other side of that, that issue.

54:55 There are times, you know, at times we get encouraged.

54:58 But there should fundamentally beneath that be there's something bigger and better than myself.

55:04 I want, at the end of the day, I want my writing to be an invitation into a bigger world.

55:07 I don't want it to be an invitation into just more of myself and my own plans and my own ideas.

55:12 I want to recognize that God is doing something larger than I could do on my own.

55:16 That there's something, there is a narrative and there's a trajectory to history

55:20 by God's revelation that is bigger and more profound than my own dreams, my own visions for myself.

55:26 And that by his grace, I'm invited into that, not to just take, but to submit myself to him

55:31 and become a participant in what he's doing.

55:33 That's how we begin to actually change who we are.

55:37 Absolutely. And we'll have one more question.

55:40 So that kind of leaves the five masculine instincts.

55:42 Again, thank you for sending that my way, guys.

55:44 That will be in the show notes so that you can check it out.

55:45 But to kind of wrap up and put a bone what we're talking about today,

55:48 I don't believe that you talked about this. If you did, I've forgotten.

55:51 But one thing that I'm obsessed with and that a lot of people in my audiences

55:54 are obsessed with is rights of passage for young boys.

55:58 Because in our modern culture, we don't do that.

56:00 And so what you end up getting is a lot of boys that self-actualize.

56:04 They self-define when they become a man, the first time they have sex,

56:07 the first time they buy their own vehicle, when they move away to college,

56:09 when they do this or when they do that, they get to self-actualize because

56:13 dad is either not there or crappy. Society doesn't tell them that. Their church doesn't

56:18 tell them that because there's some random sex of different religions

56:22 that kind of tell you when you're a man and those types of things.

56:25 And culture looks at these rights of passage, you know,

56:28 why would you want a kid to be welcomed into manhood?

56:30 Because manhood is inherently toxic, you crazy, crazy bigot.

56:33 Like that's kind of where it's gone. But I want young boys to know.

56:38 I want them to go on a journey where they know,

56:40 hey, this is what's expected of you as a man. Here are the things about you personally

56:45 that I think will be some of your biggest, you know, missteps that you're going to have

56:48 in your life, some things that you're going to have to be careful about.

56:51 Here's the responsibility that we're going to put on you now at this age.

56:55 But we don't see that anywhere. Why not?

56:58 Yeah. Well, I love the way you're talking about it because I'm a father.

57:01 I've got a son and a daughter. My son's eight. My daughter's five.

57:05 I'm already thinking about and I'm seeing like these opportunities

57:08 to give my son greater responsibility and to talk about how you take on that responsibility.

57:13 And I think the way you framed it's really helpful and a good one.

57:16 There are cultures that practice rites of passage as a kind of, I prove myself,

57:22 I do some feet of strength or endurance by which I've now been accepted into manhood.

57:27 One of the things, and I do write about this a little bit in the cane chapter,

57:29 one of the things that struck me is that the Hebrew culture, when you go back and read the Bible,

57:34 there doesn't seem to be an intentional rite of passage like that that they practice.

57:38 Maybe they did. It's just not recorded in scripture.

57:40 But there's no like hold on to the glowing immerse as long as you can or go out into the desert

57:44 and survive 40 days or but there is within the Jewish practice this moment of recognition in

57:50 which a boy becomes a man. The Jewish faith calls it the bar mitzvah. Bar mitzvah literally means,

57:55 usually happens at age 13. It literally means the son of the commandment.

58:00 And there's a moment in the bar mitzvah celebration where the father of the son gets up and

58:04 prays, thank you God that I am no longer punishable for this boy's sins. And then the boy marks that

58:11 transitioning into manhood by reading from the Torah, by reading from the scrolls in Hebrew.

58:16 The reason that it's a celebration of son of the commandment is literally what the bar mitzvah

58:21 notes is. The son has gone from being the moral responsibility of his father to now bearing moral

58:27 responsibility for himself. What strikes me about that is what the Jewish faith is marking is,

58:34 your rite of passage into manhood is not one of proving yourself a man but rather one of taking

58:39 up the responsibility of being a man. That you are now taking moral responsibility for your decisions,

58:46 for your behavior and for your pursuit of God. I think that's a really powerful way of thinking

58:51 about what it means to become a man. It doesn't just mean I've gone out and proved it. Look,

58:55 I'm strong enough to be one. It means as of today, I am taking the responsibility upon myself

59:02 to grow in my manhood, to become a son of the commandment, to bear moral responsibility for

59:07 the right and wrong of my life. That manhood is at the end of the day, the taking up of responsibility.

59:13 I think it's a really powerful way of thinking of that rite of passage.

59:17 And I also think that we should focus on both. We should focus on proving it and also taking

59:21 responsibility because you can train your 16 year old kid to be really physically to be an

59:27 enduror. But one of the best examples, and then we'll go and wind you a close. And I don't even

59:32 remember the context of this, but it was just a father and his brother, they each had sons that

59:37 were like the same age. So they were like 13, 14 years old. And what they had done for the months

59:41 and years leading up to the event that I'm about to describe is they were teaching their sons

59:46 survivalist stuff, like how to create a fire and how to make shelter and how to look for food and

59:51 forge for water and all those different things. And so then what they did is father and son and

59:55 father and son, right, you know, uncles, cousins, a whole deal, they walk up the mountain. And then

59:59 when they get to the top of the mountain, the whatever mountain they were climbing,

1:00:03 the fathers say, all right, boys, y'all are staying up here for the night or, you know,

1:00:07 all the rest of the evening and night. And we'll see you in the morning back down at base camp.

1:00:12 And they walked off with all the supplies, right, you know, for the most part, like they left

1:00:15 in with just enough to where they could, you know, take care of themselves for the rest of the evening.

1:00:20 Now if that was all that it would be, that's the prove it part. The kids make it down, they did

1:00:24 get eaten by a bear or a mountain liner, you know, fall off a cliff or something like that.

1:00:28 There they proved it. But when the young men got to the bottom of the mountain,

1:00:32 each father took their respect. Like, I'm getting choked up because I've got like a two year old

1:00:36 and a three month old right now, they took their sons to the side and they said, look,

1:00:40 here are the best things about you as a person. Here's the great things about your wiring.

1:00:45 Here's the things that you're going to struggle with. But this is so important. It's not just about

1:00:48 proving what you did on top of the mountain. Now we're back down here. Now we're in regular life.

1:00:53 I need to see you take up that mantle and that responsibility as a man.

1:00:56 And man, like that's, that's the model to a degree. And I want that to be expanded out

1:01:00 to where it's accessible for fathers all over the place, you know?

1:01:03 Yeah, I'm part of the power of that is saying to a young boy, it is possible.

1:01:07 And I think that's the thing our culture has robbed him of is we just think,

1:01:11 so many of you think it's a joke, right? The responsibility is a joke. Well,

1:01:14 this is C.S. Lewis's in the abolition of man, right? He says, we laugh, we laugh at honor

1:01:18 and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We build, or we guild the horses and then send

1:01:24 them out to be fruitful, right? We want to laugh at morality and right and wrong and the sense of

1:01:29 purpose and meaning. And then we're shocked when kids grow up and behave like there's no right

1:01:34 or wrong, behave like there's nothing worth living for when there is no meaning. When they

1:01:38 commit violent acts and we ask, how is that possible? Well, at some point, we have to start saying to

1:01:43 our children as they're growing up, it's possible. It's possible to be a person of character and that

1:01:48 it matters and that there is right and wrong and there is good and evil and that the way in which

1:01:52 you grow into that manhood matters for your family and for our communities. And so you have to take

1:01:58 that responsibility. So yeah, saying there's a responsibility, but I like the way you put it also.

1:02:02 It is possible to do it. Do not lose hope in that possibility. And guys, you know,

1:02:07 we equipment to push back darkness here at this ministry. One of the ways that you push back

1:02:10 against postmodernism is just showing your kids that there is a difference between truth and

1:02:15 untruth, there is a difference between truth and falsehood between what's right and what's wrong.

1:02:19 And there is a moral law and we didn't just make up that moral law because, you know,

1:02:22 millions and millions of years ago, we decided as chimps that this was better than that,

1:02:26 that there was a moral law given to us by a moral law giver. But Chase, we've gone everywhere in

1:02:30 this conversation. I really appreciate you letting me kind of dig in to some of the things that are

1:02:33 kind of undergirding a lot of things that you said in the book. But as of right now, that's all for

1:02:37 me. Is there anything else you want to get off your chest? No, thank you so much. I hope guys read

1:02:40 the book. I hope I hope I drew enough lines for you. Let me know when you want to do the five-hour

1:02:44 dinner and I'm happy to answer all those questions. At the end of the day, there's a lot more views

1:02:48 and opinions I have about masculinity than are in the book. This isn't an exhaustive. Here's everything

1:02:52 I think. But it is where I think we should start as men and where I hope all men are willing to

1:02:57 take that next step, paying close attention to your inner life, paying attention to what you

1:03:01 have in Christ. And so yeah, tons, if anybody's interested in more information, if you want to

1:03:04 try to pin me on a question to shoot me an email, you can do that at the website, the five masculine

1:03:09 instincts. There's a little online assessment there that guys can take to just start thinking

1:03:13 about which of these instincts might be at work within your life. And yeah, like I said, reach out

1:03:17 to me. I love hearing from people. If you've got questions, opinions, pushback, I'm not afraid

1:03:21 of it. Happy to talk about it. All right, all that will be in the show notes, you guys. Chase

1:03:24 rep logo. Thank you for coming on a Daunted Life of Man's podcast. Yeah, thanks for having me.

1:03:28 There you go, guys. I hope you enjoyed my time with Chase rep logo. But before we let you go,

1:03:32 we are going to do a quick resilience boost. Add in Daunted Life, our mission is equipping

1:03:35 men to pushback darkness with content that for just spiritual, mental and physical resilience.

1:03:39 So I've got three links for you today. One, I've got a link to where you can go by the five masculine

1:03:43 instincts. I've got a link to the five masculine instincts website. That's where he talks about

1:03:46 that little test, a little survey thing that you can take. And then also a link to his personal

1:03:50 website. All right, guys, thanks so much for listening to the show. We do appreciate it wherever

1:03:53 you're listening to this. Please subscribe, rate and leave us a positive five star review. If you

1:03:56 want me to come speak live at your event or on your podcast, just shoot me an email to info at

1:04:00 undontadotlife. That's I N F O at undontadotlife. You can follow us on Instagram and like us on

1:04:05 Facebook and check out our website for everything else, including how to donate to keep more content

1:04:08 like this coming your way. Just go to www dot undontadotlife. And as always, we want to thank the band

1:04:13 August Burns read for allowing us to use their music for our content. The music on this podcast

1:04:17 is our song cutting the ties, which is off their 10th anniversary re recording of their album

1:04:21 leveler. The links are in the description. I'm your host Kyle Thompson. Remember, keep pushing back

1:04:27 darkness, keep forging spiritual, mental and physical resilience. Keep seeking the lion of Judah.

1:04:57 [Music]