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This is undaunted life a man's podcast. I'm your host Kyle Thompson. Let's get
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into it. All right, guys, we got a special return guest to the podcast today. His name
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is Doug Wilson. So he is a conservative reform to evangelical theologian and pastor at Christ
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Church in Moscow, Idaho. He's also written many books. And the last time he was on the
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show, we were talking about his newest book at the time, which was mere Christendom. But
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he's also written books called reforming marriage rules for reformers when the man comes around
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and many, many more. If you want to hear my discussion with him about a lot of topics
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connected to mere Christendom, go back to episode 495 of this podcast. But today we're
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talking about my favorite of all the books that he's written. And it's this one right
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here. Future men raising boys to fight giants. And so the thing about this book is written
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back in 2001, this book has been on our book list from the beginning. So the 100 books every
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modern Christian man should read lists. It's in that manhood boyhood section. And it's
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this book that talks about what it takes to raise a young man and to put him in a pathway
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or point him in the direction of true biblical, biblical, godly masculinity. And I get people
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that want me to do boys content a lot, because again, all my content is made for men. And
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eventually we will expand out into writes of passage stuff and doing stuff for young
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boys. But in the meantime, it's books like this that kind of give you the scaffolding
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for how to create an environment around your son, whether you're a father listening to
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this or a mother, that would lead them to where they can actually fight giants someday.
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So in this interview, we talk about why he wrote the book. At the very end, we talk about
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Hey, if you'd written the book today, you know, what would you add to it? You know, would
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you take anything away? What would you add to it? And he had a very interesting answer
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to that. But we talked about, you know, what is biblical masculinity? How can we use that
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as the model? We also talked about how men are trying to raise boys to become men, but
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the men aren't even men themselves yet. So they're adults, they can shave, they've got
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adult responsibilities, but they're not actually men themselves yet. We talk about how pacifism
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and specifically forced pacifism has caused a lot of issues in this area of helping boys
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grow up into being men. We talk about the issues that the church has created, how the
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church certainly drives men away as I've talked about a million times on the show, but they
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drive boys away as well and how that creates a lot of issues. But also, hey, if you're
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going to really take stuff like this seriously, like what Doug talks about in future men or
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what I talk about on the show, you got to get mama on board. And how do you do that?
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How do you get her to understand what it, what it's like to be a boy? Because she never
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was one. She was never a young boy that went through puberty. She was never a young boy
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that went to get in a fight to protect somebody else. Like, how do you get her on board? But
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then we talk about, you know, what dad should do whenever they find out that their sons
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have sinned sexually. You know, maybe they looked at porn or they were fooling around
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with a girl or something like that. And how does a good godly father deal with those situations?
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And we weaved in and out of a lot of other different subjects. We didn't have all the
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time in the world today. So we, we kind of kept it tight to the very, very important
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things about this book. But I really enjoyed his second appearance here on the show. So
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I'm not going to keep him from you any longer. So without further ado, let's get into it.
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Doug Wilson, you're back. I guess we didn't get you in enough trouble last time you're
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on the show. So I figured we'd bring you back on to see if cancellation was a pace. How
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you doing?
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I'm doing well. We have to keep trying. Okay, we are going to definitely keep trying. You
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keep writing books as proficiently as you have you been doing throughout the throughout the
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years and we will be able to make that happen. But today, we're going to go all the way
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way back in the way back machine to 2001, where you wrote what I find to be my favorite
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Doug Wilson book and it's this book here. Future men raising boys to fight giants. So again,
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it seems crazy that book's coming up on a quarter century old, but we're going to cover
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a lot of ground. I'm going to read a lot of quotes from this book. It's very, very quotable.
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It's a must have must read for fathers with sons and mothers with sons. It is on our
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book list. The 100 books every modern Christian man should read list. It's in the boy hood
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slash manhood section. So just briefly before we dig in, why did you write this book?
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I think I think the Genesis long time ago, right? Right. Yeah. But I think the Genesis
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of the book had to do with something I say early on, where I was doing a teacher training
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thing at at Logos. And I said something about the girls in your class in elementary school
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are going to be moms and wives and working in the community and everybody's just take
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it and stride. And then I said, and the little boys in your class are going to be airline
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pilots and attorneys and judges and doctors. And everybody got this panic look on their
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face like, you mean these, these, these boys in 20 years are going to be running the world
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30 years, they're going to be, they're going to move into adulthood. And it's, and so it's
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sort of a striking thing that boys are future men. And as I say, somewhere, if you don't
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teach the boys, the men won't know. Right. And so basically, if you target this is a thing
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for evangelism and church ministry and families and everything, if you target the girls, you're
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going to get the girls. If you target the boys, you're going to get the boys and the
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girls. Right. If you, if you target the boys, if you, and so this is not a dismissal writing
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a book on future men is not a way of backhanding the girls like the girls are unimportant.
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It's recognizing the schematic diagram of the human race that God set up. So if you, if you
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teach boys to be responsible leaders to take responsibility to cultivate a godly masculinity,
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the women are going to flourish in that. That's the best, the best thing you can do for women
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is to provide good men. Absolutely. I certainly co signed that. And that's where we get into
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the rub from the beginning is, okay, so what is godly masculinity? What is biblical masculinity?
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A lot of people have tried to write the book on that, but I want to read a quote from from
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here. And then I want to get you to give us some feedback on that. So here's a quote from
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the book, Future Men. There are two basic directions a boy can take in departing from
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biblical masculinity. One is the option of a feminine feminist and the other is a macho-like
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counterfeit masculinity. With the former, he takes as a model, a set of virtues, which
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are not supposed to be his virtues. With the latter, he adopts a set of pseudo virtues,
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practices, which are not virtues at all. And so you're exactly right. We either get told,
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Hey, you don't need to be a man at all. You need to basically put all of your manly tendencies
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behind you or the other side, which is, Hey, you know, it's, it's dirt roads, it's drinking
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beer, it's beef jerky, it's killing animals, all things that are awesome, but things that
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don't make you a man. So for looking to the Bible, this tome of a book, you know, the Bible's
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a library more than it's a book, how can you encapsulate what biblical masculinity is in
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terms of how we should model it? Okay. So my one sentence, a definition of masculinity
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is masculinity is the glad assumption of sacrificial responsibility. Okay. So when you teach boys
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to gladly assume the responsibility they have to sacrifice for others, the glad assumption
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of sacrificial responsibility, that goes along with another. That's a there's a corollary
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to that, which is that authority flows to those who take that kind of responsibility.
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So when you take responsibility, you're stepping into a biblical form of leadership. When you
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get to key off of the machismo, false masculinity, which wants to make excuses, that wants to
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say the sun was in my eyes, the grass was wet, a bee distracted me, you know, that kind of
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excuse making is a good way to get authority to run away from you. So authority will naturally
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gravitate to authority will naturally flow to those who take responsibility. And the
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illustration I use for that is if I'm walking in a city park or something, and there's a
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softball game going on, and the right fielder drops an easy fly ball. And the short stop
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starts saying, you know, slapping his love and saying, all right, guys, we can do better
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than that. That would, you know, we need to tighten up and let's let's all focus. And
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then I walk on I don't know anything else about the scenario, except that I know who's
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probably the team captain, or who will shortly be the team captain, because he didn't have
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anything to do with the drop ball and right field. But he took responsibility for it. He
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he spoke in a corporate way, and he an authority is going to flow to that guy. But if the short
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stop starts ragging on the right fielder and accusing him or worse yet if the right fielder
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starts making excuses for why he dropped the ball, then what you're doing is you're having
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people who in their excuse making have stopped playing the other team and are starting to
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play one another. And that team as a team is going to disintegrate. So transfer the softball
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team to your family. If your family is characterized by blaming blame shifting, excuse making,
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that sort of thing, what you're doing is you're setting up a family that's poised to disintegrate.
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I think you're absolutely correct in that. And I've seen that my ability to take on more
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has accelerated with each subsequent child that I've had. I've had two sons and it's
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like, wait a minute, this is more responsibility, but I welcome it. It's daunting certainly,
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but I'm welcoming it. But part of the problem that I think most men have when they're trying
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to, you know, catechize or just basically lead their boys in the manhood as that they aren't
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men yet themselves. There's a great quote from the book here. This is a great need in the
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Christian church today. We have a dearth of genuine fathers. We have males who have
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begotten more males, but we do not have many true fathers, many men who should now be training
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their boys to be men are not yet men themselves. And I just got to tell you, Doug, I've been
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around a lot of men that they're adults, they can shave, they pay taxes like they're
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gainfully employed. But when it comes to checking any of the typical boxes of manhood, machismo,
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pseudo masculinity or real masculinity, they check so very few of these boxes. I don't
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even know where to go from here. Like, how did we get to this point? Like, how do we
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turn it around? Take that wherever you want to go. Yeah, I was greatly privileged to grow
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up with a godly father. So I knew what it looked like. I could just watch. And many
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of the things I know, I think I learned from watching, not from a book. But but my dad,
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who was such a good and godly example, did not have a Christian home. His father came
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to the Lord later in life after my father had. So my, my father grew up in, in a Judeo-Christian,
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godfearing sort of thing, but not nothing evangelical, nothing, nothing pronounced, not
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a Bible centered home at all. And my, my father, after he became a Christian at the Naval Academy.
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So decided that I, I need models. I need, because the Bible talks about the importance
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of learning by imitation. Paul says imitate me as I imitate Christ. We are in, in Ephesians,
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therefore his beloved children be imitators of God. We are, we are instructed to imitate
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good and godly examples. Of course, the Lord Jesus above all. But also people like the
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Apostle Paul, my father decided that since he didn't have any real time models, what
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he was going to, what he was going to do is he was going to start reading biographies
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of, of godly Christian men, missionary biography, missionary biographies, that sort of thing.
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So he could see it's not the same thing as seeing it firsthand, but he was able to get
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a sense in real time of, of what a godly response to a particular, particular situation would
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be. And then he, he gave me that, um, the privilege of being able to see what he had
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learned in real time in a real person. Hey guys, real quick, if you're anything like
13:12
me, you were constantly on the lookout for high quality products that are actually made
13:15
here in America by American hands. The problem is that a lot of American companies have outsourced
13:21
their labor overseas. So it's an American company, but it's supporting people that don't
13:25
live here. So I've always went to partner with an American company that prioritizes
13:29
America, American workers and making all of their materials here in this country. That's
13:34
why I want to remind you that we are partnered with Origin. Origin is an apparel company
13:38
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13:43
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13:48
And these are the only jujitsu geese that are made completely in America. They also make
13:52
jeans. Yes, they're stretchy and awesome. They also make amazing hunting gear. And I know
13:57
you guys love your kuyu and your sicka, but those companies use overseas labor and they
14:01
don't do that to help you guys out. They do that to increase their profit margins. Origin
14:06
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14:09
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14:13
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14:17
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14:21
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14:33
originusa.com. Use the promo code undaunted to get 10% off of your order. Again, that's
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originusa.com promo code undaunted to get 10% off of your order one, Doug. I think that's
14:45
a great commercial as well. Just for people in general, that's why I have a biography
14:48
section of the 100 books every monitor. Christian man should read list because I didn't get
14:53
a chance to talk to Theodore Roosevelt. My dad didn't know Theodore Roosevelt. No one
14:56
I know knew Theodore Roosevelt. We don't have any stories except from what we get from his
15:00
biographies and autobiographies. And one thing that we already talked about at this
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point, Doug, was this idea of pacifism. And pacifism is typically not presented as an
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option to boys. It's typically forced on them. And it reminded me of a debate I did
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a couple of years ago with this anti gun anti second amendment pacifist Christian activist
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named Shane Clayborn. He literally goes on tour around the country, convincing law abiding
15:24
American Christians to give up their firearms where they destroy them right there, you know,
15:28
in front of them, right? And then all of a sudden, people are safer because magic and
15:32
fairies or something like that. And he has this entire ministry based on a wrong exit
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exit Jesus of Isaiah two four. When Isaiah two four talks about turning your swords into
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plow shares and your spears into pruning hooks, he thinks that means we do that ourselves.
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That it's not God doing that. But it's that we do it ourselves. But I want to read this
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quote from this book because this is perhaps my favorite section. So it's anyone that doesn't
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like hearing me read out loud, Doug included buckle in because I'm going to read a longer
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section than normal, but I think this is so so important here. Man who followed Jesus Christ,
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the dragon slayer must themselves become lesser dragon slayers. And this is why it is absolutely
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essential for boys to play with wooden swords and plastic guns. Boys have a deep need to
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have something to defend something to represent in battle. And to beat the spears into pruning
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hooks prematurely before the war is over will leave you fighting the dragon with a pruning
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hook. The Christian faith is in no way pacifistic. The piece that will be ushered in by our great
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prince will be a peace purchase with blood. As our Lord sacrifice himself in this war,
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so must his followers learn to do boys must learn that they are growing up to fight in
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a great war. And they must consequently learn as boys to be strong sacrificial courageous
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and good. Now this is a guiding principle. In my opinion, Doug, when it comes to how I'm
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dealing with my three year old, my one year old, and we'll talk about momma here in a
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little bit because mama doesn't get the competition as much. She doesn't get the fighting. She
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doesn't get the wrestling. She doesn't get why I so desperately want my boys to have
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cauliflower ears like I do. But talk to us a little bit about this, this kind of modern
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Christiandom attitude towards any type of violence, even righteous violence. And they would themselves
17:15
say righteous violence isn't even a category. Ready to go. Yeah, it looks, it looks very
17:23
spiritual. You can deck it out. This pacifist approach can be decorated to look like a higher
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way, like, like you're a mixture of Jesus and Gandhi. And it, it, that's posture for Christians
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plays well in the secular world. That's the, the, the Christian who won't fight is someone
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who gets kudos and accolades from the unbelieving world. Well, there's a, there's a consistent
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Christian, Christians who are written off by the world as belligerent or polemical or
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too hard edged are, are dismissed as, as believers as Christians who make their life uncomfortable.
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And truth be told, if you make other people's lives uncomfortable, they will soon figure
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out how to make your life uncomfortable. So one of my favorite anecdotes from Ambrose
18:30
Beerses, the devil's dictionary, he was not a believer, but in his dictionary definition
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of valor, he, he says that he has a little anecdote of a commander yelling at a lieutenant.
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I commanded you to move forward at the battle of Chancellor'sville, I think. Why have you
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not moved forward? And the, the lieutenant of the delinquent brigade said, sir, I'm convinced
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that any further display of valor on the part of my troops will bring them into contact
18:59
with the enemy. And that's, and that's what people want to avoid war battles, even polemical
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battles, even, you know, even verbal battles, political legal battles are uncomfortable.
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Um, it's, it's much easier to, to sit by a cozy fire with a good book and you know,
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look, leave me alone, leave me alone. But as, and there's a, there's a form of that that
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you can respect like life in the Shire, um, before Bilbo and, and Sam headed off to do
19:44
their great deeds, but you have to recognize that life in the Shire is only possible because
19:52
of Rangers surrounding it. Um, basically a lot of there, there are a lot of middle-class
19:59
Americans who are kept secure in their homes by people that they wouldn't have in their
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homes. Right. Oh, that he's kind of scary. Uh, and the thing that there's a while we're
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here, this is something that I've found curious for a long time. Oftentimes the center left
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evangelicals, if you know what I mean, the, the, uh, the people who would, would be in
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favor of gun control. I'm from Idaho. So out here gun control means using both hands.
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Um, I just saw a map that, that I know like 60% of all homes in Idaho have, have a gun.
20:44
Amen. Yeah. So, uh, anyway, um, the, the, what, what happens is, uh, when we defend, basically
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when we defend others, uh, that gives the others the opportunity to feel superior because
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they're, they're, they're living off of borrowed money. Right. Um, right. Um, one of my favorite
21:15
anecdotes from history is the early Quakers who are a pacifist sect, uh, settled in Delaware
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and Pennsylvania. And in the, um, and they, in a marvelous stroke of good luck, uh, the
21:30
Indians where they settled were also kind of pacifist Indians. So up in Massachusetts
21:37
and down south, they didn't, they, it was not so fortunate, but the, the Quakers lucked
21:41
out, but the Quakers were also very industrious and merchants and hardworking. And so soon
21:47
they were plagued by pirates in the up of the Chesapeake Bay. And there was a big controversy
21:54
among the Quakers. Do we fight the pirates? And eventually they said, well, yeah, we're
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going to fight the pirates. Um, and there was a big controversy among the Quakers because,
22:06
uh, it's, it's sort of like planting a garden. Gardens are wonderful flower gardens, vegetable
22:11
gardens. And you're out, out, out in the country and you say, and I don't believe in fences.
22:18
So I'm not going to have a fence around the garden. Well, the deer are going to eat every,
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the deer are going to eat everything. So you can have a garden without a fence for about
22:27
10 minutes. Um, so the, the, basically I would regard pacifism as a luxury purchased for
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the pacifist by the people who aren't pacifists. Absolutely. It's certainly the case. And I'm,
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I can't remember the first person that said it, but the first person I heard say it was
22:45
Jordan Peterson where it said, Hey, a man that's incapable of violence is not a virtuous man.
22:49
He's a worthless man. Because at the end of the day, if you not responding to a situation
22:55
violently because you're incapable is not the same as being a meeked person who is capable
23:00
of that violence, but choosing not to act in that way. That's where we get into a whole
23:04
concept of meekness, which you and I talked about last time. But I think the church, uh,
23:09
we, you know, we'll just use the church that term broadly has aided in this, uh, a little
23:13
bit as well where there's this confusion over whether we should be aggressive or pacifistic
23:18
or whether we should, you know, have biblical doctrine be the backbone of what we do or
23:22
something else. And there's a quote that you, you say here that kind of leads us into that
23:26
discussion. Why do boys not come to church? We wonder. The answer is that we chase them
23:31
out with our insipid and impotent doctrine. But simply our boys cannot learn how to become
23:37
Christian men, men with doctrinal backbone without a return to the doctrines of the Reformation,
23:42
doctrines which are taught and taught plainly in the scriptures. What I would add to that
23:47
and what you would certainly echo would be a full-throated display of the gospel on a
23:50
regular basis where we have preachers and not just teachers, but also, and you talk about
23:55
this in the book and I won't read the quote, but it's just music. Our men are not considered
24:00
when it comes to the songs that are chosen, the lyrical content of those songs, the key
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with which they are sung in. And we did talk about this a little bit last time, but the
24:09
church is not doing any favors when it comes to attracting the boys, much less than men.
24:14
What do you have to say about that? Absolutely. If you have, if you have what I would only
24:20
characterize as effeminate worship, um, where the sermons are very mild, Ted talks with
24:28
the Bible verse attached, uh, the music is largely Jesus is my girlfriend music and everything
24:38
is soft and it's sort of like a powder puff ministry or the preaching and the teaching
24:45
and the exhortations, everything is conducted with a feather duster. Um, what you're going
24:51
to do is you're going to, uh, certain men are going to find that distasteful and they're
24:56
going to leave and other men are going to find that attractive and they're going to
25:01
stay, but the men who stay, the men who find that attractive and who stay are going to
25:05
be the effeminate men, basically effeminate worship is going to attract effeminate men
25:12
and those effeminate men are going to wind up in the ministry and you're going to have
25:15
some blue collar worker who, you know, he's really good with the backhoe. He could repair
25:20
sewing machines with the backhoe, um, and, and he's going to come to one or two services
25:27
and then just leave in disgust. That man has nothing, whatever to say to me, right? And
25:34
it's not because I think, uh, uh, ministers ought to be learned. I think ministers ought
25:40
to, um, know how to read and they should, they should be scholarly, but there's a difference
25:46
between being intelligent and well read and being a pencil neck geek.
25:51
No, I think you're absolutely true. You're echoing a lot of the same sentiments I give
25:55
because again, people think sometimes that I want the guys to be macho and be into the
26:00
same things that I'm into. Well, I just so happened to be into beef jerky and hunting
26:03
animals and lifting weights and fighting and all those things, but you could be into
26:07
writing sonnets and cooking gourmet meals and, you know, relaxing by the fire, reading
26:12
a book, and we can be equally as masculine because it's, we're just breaking things down
26:17
into interest, but you're absolutely right. You're seeing these effeminate men attract
26:21
these other effeminate men. And one of the best emails I've ever gotten in the history
26:24
of my ministry, Doug, has been whenever I did an entire episode on the effeminacy of modern
26:29
Christian music and how that's made for women, um, and effeminate men. And it was the first
26:35
time that I'd ever gotten an email from a worship leader at a church. And he said, I've never
26:40
even thought about the men when choosing the songs we would sing on Sunday morning, because
26:46
the men weren't singing anyway. So I was just catering to the women. And I was like, do you
26:50
see your problem here? And he finally got it, like snapped into place for him that weight.
26:55
I have to, I have to think about the key. I have to think about the lyrics. I have to
26:58
make sure the men don't just sit there with their hands in their pockets, waiting for this
27:01
to be over, but that they're actually there and they're participating because the church
27:05
says, go ahead. A number of years ago, a young woman who lived in our community, worked in
27:12
a local department store. And we have a lot of couples pairing off people getting, and
27:17
the couples would come into register for weddings. And she got to know a bunch of people from
27:21
our church, because of all the couples coming into register for the weddings. And she was
27:26
attracted by it. She came and she came and visited church once. And the thing that bolder
27:30
over was the men sing. Awesome. All right, the men are singing. And there are bass parts
27:38
and there are tenor parts. And we have songs in four part harmony and everybody participates.
27:44
And it's masculine, but we sing the Psalms, we don't believe in exclusive Psalm to me,
27:50
but we practice what I would call dominant Psalmity, a lot of Psalms. And the thing that
27:55
you can, one of the things that's striking, and we noticed this when we first shifted over
28:00
to Psalm singing, and I have a section in future men on music and Psalm singing, is that this
28:08
is God's songbook for the church. And the book of Psalms is full of enemies. All right.
28:18
When you sing Psalms, as Paul tells us to do in Ephesians and Colossians, singing Psalms
28:24
and hymns and spiritual songs. And those three Greek words for Psalms, hymns and spiritual
28:29
songs are the Greek words that were headers in the Septuagint for the whole book of Psalms.
28:35
So I think he's telling us to sing the book of Psalms. When you do that, you are singing
28:42
about enemies. You're asking God to deliver you from your enemies. You're asking God to
28:47
rise up and scatter his enemies. You break their teeth in their jaw. And you're really?
28:57
If you look at the hymnity of the last two centuries, there are precious few enemies
29:05
in the hymns. They're almost entirely absent. It's like a songbook for people who, there
29:15
are no war songs. There are no war songs. And this is outside of the two centuries, but
29:22
the one exception would be maybe a mighty fortress by Martin Luther. That's from the
29:27
Reformation era. Though this world with devils filled, there are enemies there. And St. Patrick's
29:32
breastplate, which is in some hymnals, but which is an ancient psalm like him. But basically,
29:39
a lot of it is just it presupposes that we're already in the Golden Age millennium. And
29:49
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30:20
What I think it presupposes that everyone, I think when you have a feminine men on staff
30:26
that are hiring other effeminate men, and those effeminate men are picking out the music,
30:30
we can't be shocked whenever they try to cater to something that is more their style. So
30:35
they would read through the Psalms and become very uncomfortable by a God that talks about,
30:39
you know, you know, bending the bow and breaking the spear and those types of things like that
30:45
would be something that would be very uncomfortable for them to read. And so they typically cater
30:48
to mama. And that's one thing that you also talk about in future men is how to get mama
30:53
on board with all this future men stuff with all this, you know, raising young boys to
30:57
be able to fight giants someday. So short quote is this an important task for husbands
31:01
and fathers is teaching mothers about sons. I had to read that sentence a couple of times
31:06
to where I was like, I didn't think you were going to say teaching mothers about sons.
31:10
I thought you were going to say teaching mothers about masculinity or teaching mothers about
31:14
fatherhood or something like that. But you know, a mother has never been a son. Another
31:18
a mother has never been a little boy. And so she has to be taught what that means and the
31:23
feelings that they're going through. So what would be your generalized advice for the men
31:26
out there that take the call to raise future men seriously for how they can get mama on
31:30
board? One one of the things this is a very good question. One of the things is the the
31:36
husband can't assume that she knows he he he must assume because dad remembers what it's
31:46
like to be an eight year old boy. He remembers what it's like to go through male adolescence.
31:51
He remembers he remembers all of that. And his wife has has no no experience with any
32:00
of that. And it's easy for us to assume and it's not just men to do this, but it's easy
32:05
for us to assume that what we know everybody knows. If if I know how to read, I don't understand
32:12
someone who's illiterate. If someone's a musician, they don't understand someone who doesn't
32:19
know how to read music. That sort of thing. And so dad should start with the assumption.
32:26
If you have boys that there will be times when mom is just flummoxed. She she's staring
32:34
at what's going on. Yeah. My wife had one of those this morning, but my boys came out.
32:42
I was listening to metal music while I was working out and I and then I just start like
32:46
mosh moshing. And my three year old and one year old just come over there and start like
32:49
throwing punches at the air and bumping into each other. She didn't quite get it, but she
32:53
did think it was funny. Yes. Yes. They are oftentimes amused until it gets to a certain
33:00
level of wrestling in the living room. Right. So the dad is is rough housing with the boys
33:06
on the living room floor. And mom is standing in the doorway of the dining room saying someone's
33:12
going to get hurt. Someone's going to get hurt. And and you and this is going to sound bad.
33:19
But that's part of the point. Right. Okay. Now you don't want to hurt deliberately, but
33:27
basically if you wrap your sons up in cotton batting or bubble wrap and you remove risk
33:35
from their lives, what you're doing is wounding them in a way where the wounds won't bleed
33:41
until they're grown. Hmm. Okay. So you're you're standing there with your wife on the
33:49
front porch and your 10 year old goes by the sidewalk standing on the bicycle seat. And
33:58
mom said, Oh, you know, tell them to stop that. And and you could say, you know, I do think
34:05
that was not a good idea. But he'll learn to stop that. He will certainly learn. All
34:10
right. Now you don't want situations where the boys are being stupid with a capital
34:20
ass. Sure. Of course. You know, because there there's a mom and dad are going to have different
34:27
levels of risk tolerance. Dad's going to have higher level of risk tolerance, usually than
34:32
mom does. And it's essential that the boys are doing things that make mom uncomfortable.
34:40
It's also essential that dad not just leaver to worry, but that he, you know, take her
34:48
aside, talk with her, explain things to her, and say, listen, there is if he's at school,
34:55
if the boys are at school, and he comes in off the playground with blood on him anywhere,
35:02
it is a glory moment for him. Don't don't take away his glory. This is the way it is.
35:11
I think it's certainly the way it is. And I think it's also true that you have to have
35:15
a wife that is willing to be on board and willing to let you take the lead at different
35:19
points when it comes to those things. Because we're not saying that a kitchen ever run to
35:22
mom if they're hurt. We're saying that if they're hurt, the hurt is is in itself a way of getting
35:28
them from boyhood to manhood. It's because they're gonna have to be resilient. They're
35:31
gonna have to overcome that hurt. They're gonna have to learn from it. Because you typically
35:34
don't go stick the fork in the socket multiple times. Now that's capital as stupid. That's
35:39
something that you should intercede for your kid. But when it comes to jumping off of a
35:43
ramp or, you know, getting an arresting match with a stranger, those are things that you
35:47
should probably encourage unless that stranger is another adult male. But that, you know,
35:50
we'll talk about that at another time. There's another, I should tell you a quick story.
35:55
Yeah. One of my, one of my grandsons who's in college now, but when he was a little boy,
36:00
like three years old, he was jumping off the couch in the living room and they lived downtown,
36:06
near downtown and a block away from a hospital. And he said dad, he wanted to do a flip off
36:14
the couch. And his dad said, no, I think I'm gonna draw the line there. No, no flips off
36:20
the couch. And my grandson said, but the hospital's right there.
36:25
Now, that's a kid that gets it. That kid's going places. I don't think Doug, I don't
36:31
think you got to worry about that kid one bit. He's already got his things mapped out in his
36:35
brain. That's awesome. There's another scenario that I want you to speak to that is a big
36:40
moment for dads. And it's not an if thing. It's a when thing. It's when they first find
36:46
that their kid is sending sexually. So typically that's going to be with looking at pornography
36:52
or masturbating, or fooling around with a girl or something like that. And dad finds
36:56
out about it. Now, I know how I was raised. I know the men that I was around. And a lot
37:00
of that stuff was kind of, if not explicitly, just kind of like, Oh, boys will be boys.
37:05
It was just kind of encouraged. You know, I had a lot of pictures on my walls, posters
37:09
of girls and bikinis and and things like that. Like my parents are just like, Oh, he's just
37:13
a normal red, but we're a blooded American boy. But for that dad that comes across the
37:18
sexual sin and the privity of their son. A lot of these men themselves are also struggling
37:24
with that. So it's kind of a difficult multifaceted question. But what should a biblically strong
37:30
masculine father do in that moment to not crush the kid and leave them in their depravity,
37:37
but to kind of show them like, Hey, this, this isn't how we handle this part of our life
37:41
that we were given as a gift.
37:43
Yes. It's a very important question. And it is a question that increases in importance
37:51
every year that goes by as technology morphs and changes. And the temptations to various
37:58
kinds of perversion are thrust at us from, you know, every, every conceivable direction.
38:06
And then you couple this with the fact that the kids are oftentimes more tech savvy than
38:13
their parents are, or at least more tech savvy on what the latest social app is, right? Some
38:21
social app that's feeding questionable material that the parents have never heard of. You
38:27
know, so you've got, you've got that. There's several things that, and let me start with
38:35
the baseline thing. I would say that when a man is a good and godly father, okay, good
38:43
and godly father, that is one of the best protections sexually for his son. Because I
38:51
remember vividly standing at a bus stop when I was a, I was just a little kid, probably
38:56
June, well, I was June, probably junior high. And I remember another kid at the bus stop bragging
39:05
about all the women his father had been with across the South Pacific in the Second World
39:11
War. And he was, you know, horse around joking about all the brothers and sisters that he
39:17
had that he didn't know about. So he was bragging about his father's immorality. And I remember
39:26
the sickness that I felt about all those kids growing up without a dad. So one of one of
39:35
the central things that that dad needs to teach his sons is the connection, the hard hardwired
39:44
connection between sexual temptation, the sexual attractiveness of women, breasts, wounds, all
39:53
of that, the hard connection of that with fatherhood. Okay, and what you then need to
40:02
do and say, basically, and this has to be sort of established before the temptation start
40:07
to come in, where you're having conversations. And the conversations are should not be, oh,
40:15
there's going to be a real attractive thing coming along here. And so my message to you
40:19
is don't. It's it's got to be deeper than that. It's got to be this is this is going
40:25
to be an assault on your ability to be a good and godly father. Okay, so that's, that's
40:34
one thing. The hard connection between resisting pornography and being the kind of dad, you
40:43
want to be the kind of dad, son, that I am being to you. Right. Right. And this, this
40:50
whole thing is connected to backup stream a little bit. And this is probably the precondition
40:57
for all this instruction. And that is boys are wired to their appetites. When they're
41:04
hungry, they're hungry. When they, when they lose in a competition, boys are connected
41:13
to their passions. And that passion can be competition sports, that passion can be hunger,
41:20
that passion can be wanting to wanting to sleep that path, you know, they're any number
41:26
of passion, you know, anger when they're hurt, you know, that sort of thing. And these passions
41:33
are much in evidence when they're two and three and four years old. And if dad and mom
41:39
are diligent to teach their son in the ways of self control, when they're hungry, when
41:48
they're sleepy, when they just lost the game, when you know, you're teaching the principle
41:54
of self control. If you, if you don't teach the principle of self control and the kids
41:59
is just a little orangutan running, running loose, that goes on for 13 years. And then
42:07
this kid without any self control lessons in his bones at all, is suddenly finds himself
42:15
a wash and testosterone. And the world is full of girls. And so here's this kid without any
42:21
self control, now suddenly confronted with one of the most powerful urges that human
42:27
beings experience. So you tell me what's going to happen. If you say if you come in, if if
42:36
mom has coddled and flattered and fed him whenever he wants and felt sorry for him whenever
42:43
he wants and is has basically tatered to his passions, then all of a sudden porn's a thing.
42:53
And you say, no, no, what are you doing? Well, what are you doing? You're putting a screwing
43:00
the lid down on a pressure cooker. And if if you do that, you're going to have beans on
43:05
the ceiling. When I think it's a, it's an unfortunate thing as well, because of what
43:09
I said from the beginning, which is that dads are not even modeling this in their own personal
43:13
lives. And that's why at the beginning of every year, I do a show called how to avoid
43:16
being a crappy man in whatever year it is. And every single year, I say no porn, no jerking
43:22
off because it's like, if you're trying to have that discussion with your child about
43:26
the importance of honoring themselves and honoring everybody else in a sexual fashion
43:31
or honoring their future spouse in a sexual fashion, it's like, you don't want that to
43:35
be a do as I say, and not as I do type moment. Now we're running short on time. So I want
43:39
to hit hit a couple more things. Yeah, please say one thing about that. And that is even
43:44
if the family, even if the wife and the kids don't know about dad's secret sin there, what
43:50
you're doing is you're giving covenantal permission. You're leaving back doors, back doors unlocked
43:57
of your house in a bad neighborhood. That's what you're doing. So it's, it's not a dad
44:04
telling the son not to smoke, even though he smokes and everybody sees it might be something
44:09
where nobody knows, except God and the devil. And so don't leave those doors unlocked. Sorry,
44:17
go ahead. No, that's perfect. And you have, but you do have a lot of dads that are very
44:20
you know, on top of it, when it comes to checking the door locks and checking to make sure the
44:24
windows are locked and everything on the way home, or you know, on the way to bed or something
44:29
like that, they're they're good with concealed carry and they're good with fighting and they're
44:31
down to do those things. But they do leave themselves open and they leave a lot of, you
44:36
know, planes of attack for Satan. So we'll actually just have to make this the last question
44:40
of the day. But it's just a very generic question, which was this book was written back in 2001.
44:46
Obviously a lot of things have changed. A lot of things have changed in the last two or
44:49
three years, much less the last, you know, two decades plus. So if you were writing future
44:54
men today, is there something that you would have left out is what other things would you
44:59
have added that you've maybe learned or learned or seen over the last couple of decades? You
45:04
know, how would the book be different if you were writing in 2024?
45:08
I don't think I would leave anything out. I think everything that's there would still
45:12
be there. I probably want to beef up or have a section or a chapter on the whole trans
45:19
thing. Yeah. And the basically the idea of nature. So boys have a nature and it's God
45:30
given nature. I've written since then about our responsibility as Christians to obey our
45:36
chromosomes. And I believe that there there's if I had it all to do over again, I would
45:45
have a hefty section on the responsibility of men to respect their masculine nature and
45:53
to teach boys to grow up into a masculine nature.
46:00
Those are a chance that we're going to get an updated version. Doug, come on, come on,
46:08
come on, baby. Let's do it. That's, that's what it's an hours in the day problem. Okay,
46:12
but it's certainly a good idea. It is a good idea. Maybe, you know, I'll do a little bit
46:16
more needling after the show closes, but I always appreciate your time. Is there anything
46:21
else you want to get off your chest before we let you go? No, thank you very much for
46:24
the opportunity. It's a privilege and an honor to speak with you. All right, we'll talk
46:28
to you next time. There you go. Guys. I hope you enjoyed my time with Doug Wilson. But before
46:32
I let you go, we are going to do a quick resilience boost. Adam Daunte, life or mission is equipping
46:36
men to push back darkness with content that forges spiritual, mental and physical resilience.
46:40
So the links I've got for you today. I've got a link to where you can buy your copy of
46:44
future men raising boys to fight giants. A link to his previous appearance on this particular
46:49
podcast on this show, rather episode four 95 and then also a link to his blog. Thank you
46:54
guys so much for listening to this episode. Wherever you're listening to this, please
46:57
subscribe, rate and leave us a positive five star review. If you want to come speak live
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at your event or on your podcast to shoot me an email to info@undaunton.life. That's
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I N F O at undaunton.life. Follow us on Instagram and like us on Facebook and check out our
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website for everything else, including how to donate to keep more content like this coming
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your way. Just go to www dot undaunted dot life. And also we want to thank the band Holy Name
47:19
for allowing us to use their music for our content. The musical in this podcast is our
47:23
song Perpetua, which is off their self titled debut album on Face Down Records. The links
47:28
are in the description. I'm your host Kyle Thompson. Remember, keep pushing back darkness,
47:34
keep forging spiritual mental and physical resilience. Keep seeking the lion of Judah.
47:53
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