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Own the dream.
1:18
This is Undaunted Life, a man's podcast.
1:22
I'm your host Kyle Thompson.
1:23
Let's get into it.
1:25
All right, guys.
1:26
Today we got a special return.
1:27
Guests of the podcast, his name is Owen Strand.
1:29
So he was on episode 361 of this podcast.
1:32
We talked about his book Christianity and Wokeness.
1:35
He's written a lot of different books and he's got a lot of fancy jobs.
1:38
He's a provost and research professor.
1:40
He's a senior fellow at the Family Research Council.
1:42
He's done a lot of great stuff.
1:44
And I talk a little bit more about his bio on episode 361.
1:47
But for today, we spent the majority of our time, really the entire time,
1:50
talking about his brand new book that is out now called the War on Men,
1:53
why society hates them and why we need them.
1:56
So as you guys know, by now, I have a book list on my website.
1:59
The 100 books every modern Christian man should read list.
2:01
I have a manhood section and I've just added that book.
2:04
As of this morning of the recording of this podcast, I added that book on there.
2:07
It is a fantastic breakdown of biblical masculinity and really what society
2:11
and parts of society are doing to try to attack the foundations that are
2:15
created for men and by men.
2:17
And so in this discussion today, we spend a lot of time really breaking that down.
2:21
We talk about, you know, why even write a Christian men's book?
2:23
Like, no one buys Christian men's books.
2:25
That's why, you know, most publishers won't even touch them.
2:27
We talk about Vodie Bockum and the forward that he wrote.
2:30
We talk about influencers and culture like, you know, an entertainer,
2:33
a Jaco Willink and a Tim Kennedy and a Cam Haines and a David Goggins and Joe
2:37
Rogan and all those guys and how men and young boys will actually look to those
2:42
guys for manhood advice because they can't get the advice inside their churches
2:45
because most of the guys inside their churches aren't really tough and rough dudes.
2:50
Like they have the softness part down pat, but they don't have really that
2:53
toughness piece.
2:54
And we talk about how that gets into the dichotomy, the seeming dichotomy between
2:58
the Lamb of God and the Lion of Judah between servant and warrior and how that
3:02
really shouldn't happen inside the church.
3:04
We shouldn't get that dichotomy, but we do.
3:06
But, you know, we talk about where does this idea that masculinity is toxic come from?
3:11
You know, why is the war on men, you know, akin to the wars on truth and
3:15
scripture and the sexes?
3:16
We spend quite a bit of time talking about the influence Jordan Peterson has had.
3:19
That's kind of like a father's voice and a father figure in our culture and how he
3:23
is doing a lot to really help pastors, whether he's doing it on purpose or not,
3:26
to be able to step into those controversial subject matters because a lot of people
3:30
are like, you're not being winsome enough.
3:32
You know, don't get into the culture war.
3:33
Be team Jesus, not team Republican or, you know, Democrat or something like that.
3:37
But it just goes way beyond that.
3:39
And I could tell you more about what, you know, what we got into in this
3:43
particular podcast episode, but it was just a very, very good conversation.
3:47
It was a quick conversation.
3:48
I can't recommend the book highly enough.
3:50
And I think the last time he came on last year, the year before, that was like the
3:53
most talked about episode by you guys in the audience.
3:57
I think that that should come through again with this particular one.
3:59
So guys, without further ado, let's get into it.
4:02
Oh, and strand, welcome back to the Daunte and life of man's podcast.
4:05
Thank you so much.
4:06
Thanks for having me back on.
4:08
Now, we'll say last time your background was a lot cooler yet.
4:11
A bunch of leather bound books around you.
4:13
What's going on now?
4:14
What's happening?
4:15
What's going on now is I am on duty as a father.
4:20
And so, yeah, I'm having to make some things work and really glad to be back on with you.
4:26
We sound great.
4:27
Well, we're just going to get right into it.
4:29
You wrote a new book and I want to tell you that we have a book list on our website
4:33
called the 100 books every modern Christian man should read list.
4:37
And so not all these books are from a Christian worldview, but there's different literature
4:41
books.
4:42
There's books about money.
4:43
There's philosophy.
4:44
There's all these things.
4:45
There's also a category called manhood.
4:47
And I just added your brand new book this morning.
4:50
I just added the war on men, why society hates them and why we need them to that list.
4:55
So I won't tell you which book on air that it replaced.
4:58
But guys, if you go look at the list, you should be able to figure it out.
5:01
But just an absolutely fantastic book about the subject matter.
5:04
But I'm just curious, why write a Christian men's book?
5:08
Because everybody knows that's in the publishing world.
5:11
Books about Christian manhood don't sell unless it's wild at heart, but that's the one outlier.
5:16
These books don't sell.
5:18
People tend to just make derivative versions of wild at heart or other books that are similar to it.
5:23
But you know, why why one about this subject matter?
5:25
I mean, what's going to be different about your offering?
5:28
Yeah, I really appreciate you having me on to discuss this and you replacing whatever book it was.
5:33
I don't know what it was, but thank you for that.
5:36
Fundamentally, yeah, that's what you hear.
5:38
That books on men don't sell because men, even if they need help, don't want to admit they need help.
5:43
But my hope is that this book can kind of hit men where they are in a good way.
5:48
Because the book is entitled The War on Men.
5:51
So what I'm not doing is coming at men as if they're idiots, as if they're all to blame,
5:58
as if they're the ones who have caused all their problems for them.
6:03
As readers will see, I don't let men off the hook.
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In fact, our sin is our greatest problem before us, not anything else.
6:09
But fundamentally, I want men to understand that there are real forces arrayed against them in 2023 and beyond.
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And I want them to understand that, for example, when they hear that masculinity is toxic,
6:20
when young men hear that, when older men hear that, but especially when boys hear that,
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that's something that's being communicated that is very poisonous and very damaging.
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And I want to help those men.
6:30
So the purpose of this book, The War on Men, is not fundamentally to crunch men over the middle like a linebacker.
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The point is to strengthen men, encourage men, help men, put an arm around their shoulder.
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I'm no perfect man, but I want genuinely to assist them however I can.
6:45
And that makes this book stand out, Kyle.
6:48
When you had the, the assistance of the great Vodie Bockam who wrote the foreword from the book,
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I actually just want to read one quick quote from his foreword before we dig into the rest of the content.
6:58
It's this, "Thus, when we malign manhood, we malign God Himself.
7:02
Moreover, we create a vacuum where men are supposed to be and nature.
7:07
Uphorring a vacuum is more than happy to fill that space with an adequate, worldly, and satanic substitutes."
7:14
And we're certainly going to get more into the substitutes here in a minute.
7:17
I want to mention that masculinity is toxic.
7:19
Those are the first three words of the book.
7:21
And you dig into kind of what that looks like and how that basically pervades our culture.
7:26
But in the introduction, you talk about, or I guess you liken the war on men to the wars simultaneously waged against truth, scripture, and the sexes.
7:37
So why is the war on men attached to those things?
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The war on men fundamentally is a war against nature as God made it. This pagan culture despises creation order.
7:49
It despises the creator. And so we've got to recognize, as Vodie rightly said, that this isn't just an attack on men.
7:55
This is an attack on God, ultimately.
7:58
And what our culture has effectively said to men is that they are lesser than women.
8:02
That women need to lean in and men need to lean back.
8:06
Women need to assert themselves and rule the world now. And the age of men is over.
8:11
In fact, there was a recent book, or I guess a little bit back, but Hannah Rosen wrote a book called The End of Men, about a decade ago.
8:18
And it got a real splash in the broader culture.
8:21
And Rosen wasn't saying, you know, there's absolutely no place for men anywhere.
8:26
But she was effectively communicating that, yes, once men led, now men are not supposed to lead anymore.
8:32
And that's an incredibly common view. I challenge it directly. I believe the complete opposite.
8:37
I believe in creation order. I believe that men are created to be the head of their wife, the head of their home, the elders and pastors in the local church, and leaders in society.
8:45
And so for believing that, I'm going to be canceled and despised by some.
8:49
But all I'm trying to do in this book, Kyle, is stand on the Word of God. There's nothing else to do.
8:53
I'm just trying to stand on God's Word. And when you stand on God's Word, actually, you not only strengthen men,
8:59
but you strengthen women and children in the ways that God has intended as well.
9:03
Well, I appreciate that. I do want to kind of, I want to take a little bit of a different tact here from the beginning.
9:08
So whenever we take away the normal examples out of culture, again, you talk about how there's going to be a vacuum or how votey talked about how there's a vacuum that's going to be filled.
9:18
And so in our world and kind of this, you know, manhood or man space, manosphere, whatever you want to call it, there are a lot of cultural influences or influencers.
9:26
So you know, you're Andrew Tate's that you mentioned in the book, Jocko Willing, Cam Haines, David Goggins.
9:31
I don't think you mentioned these guys, but Tim Kennedy and Joe Rogan.
9:34
These are guys that are not gospel centered people.
9:37
That's not the main point of whatever it is that they're doing, but men are turning to guys like that.
9:42
And we'll talk more about Jordan Peterson here in a second.
9:44
I got a couple of questions about him, but talk to me a little bit about the influences that young men especially are going towards.
9:50
Because even Jocko Willing, Jocko Willing came and spoke at a huge church in Tulsa.
9:56
And I have it on good authority that he was paid six figures to come and speak at a biblical masculinity like manhood event at this church.
10:03
And it's like, that's not Jocko Willing.
10:05
Like that's not his messages, messages, extreme ownership and, you know, prioritize and execute and dichotomy of leadership.
10:10
Like those are more his messages, but he was brought in and they were completely full because they wanted to hear a guy like Jocko talk about whatever he wanted to talk about, whether it was scriptural.
10:19
Whether it was scriptural or not.
10:21
What an excellent example of what I talk about in the introduction and throughout the book that many men, Christian men, are not stepping up and they're not taking any cuts in the batter's box on these tough issues.
10:33
There are a lot of Christian men around us, Kyle.
10:36
There's a lot of men in the church, but there's not a lot of men who want to handle the high heat, who want to take the 100 mile an hour fastballs that the culture is throwing at them.
10:44
And so guys like Rogan and Willing and others we could mention are taking those fastballs and they are like rejecting the world to a degree and they're saying, all right, they're rejecting the message about men that masculinity is toxic.
10:59
And so they're trying to punch back in their own way.
11:03
We can be thankful in a common grace sense for men like that, who step up and say some true things, there's common grace wisdom out there that some of those men have.
11:12
Talk about Peterson in a minute, but it's true for Rogan, it's true for Willing as well.
11:16
But fundamentally, Christian men cannot seed this conversation to unsaved men.
11:22
We cannot say, well, we'll just say a few scattered things about manhood on Father's Day, but other than that, we're not really going to say very much about manhood.
11:30
We're not really going to define these issues.
11:32
We're not going to say much to young men or boys about the distinctions between manhood and womanhood.
11:37
We'll just let them kind of figure that out.
11:39
We don't want to be controversial.
11:41
So we're in this crazy situation, Kyle, where the church is turning to outside voices, to non-Christian men.
11:49
And what I'm trying to do in the war on men and in even promoting the book is say, this is loco.
11:57
This is crazy.
11:58
We are the men who have the gospel.
12:00
We have what men most need.
12:02
We have that which transforms a man.
12:04
We have that which forgives a man.
12:06
We have that which makes a man new and sends him out into the world to be a strong man for the glory of God.
12:13
So we don't simply have a part to play in the manhood conversation.
12:17
We have the material on manhood that our culture needs.
12:21
One of the thing is if you take it on authority that you should wake up early and work out because Jaco says, yeah, go for it.
12:28
If you should take it on authority that you should run past your limits where you think your limits are, your self-imposed limits like David Goggin says, great.
12:36
If you think you should develop yourself to be hard to kill, like Tim Kennedy says, I'm all for that.
12:41
But again, if you're missing the gospel, you're missing everything because we see from scripture, Paul is like, you know, you know, physical fitness is of some value, but it's not of ultimate value.
12:50
And I think we know that.
12:51
But you mentioned something that's important there is when the church steps back in obfuscates, you know, any type of dramatic role, they're allowing their boys to self-initiate into manhood.
13:02
And so they follow Jack Wagon's like, you know, Andrew Tate, who says, yeah, you're a man whenever you sleep with a bunch of women unprotected or when you control these women so much that they have to work for you in order to live themselves like that type of a mindset.
13:15
But let's go to Jordan Peterson. So obviously I've talked about him a lot on this podcast. He doesn't need an introduction, but you have a couple of very important quotes that I think really kind of, you know, provide the foundation for the discussion.
13:25
One quote from the intro is this, "Dressed to the nines, looking dapper and distinguished, speaking at times with a sharp and forceful voice, here was that loss and forgotten figure, the father emerging from nowhere to offer strong and clear direction."
13:41
That's what Jordan Peterson is. So this father figure that is going to be meek in a biblical sense of meekness that he is capable of a tongue lashing, but he's not going to deliver it unless it's necessary.
13:53
But I actually want to use that quote. Oh, and if you'll forgive the longest setup ever to a question with another quote that you have about Jordan Peterson, because I think this is a more important point and it's this.
14:04
It is tragic that Peterson and the other influencers mentioned above have in many cases proven more willing to say hard truths, the many shepherds of God's flock.
14:13
This goes back to what you were saying earlier. Too often the leaders of Christ's church have proven unwilling to address controversial subjects.
14:20
But the left problematizes an area in our time, making a subject off limits like manhood, for example, some Christian leaders react to by going quiet about it in an effort to be seen as "winsome." And you scare quotes around "winsome."
14:35
I'm about tired Owen, a prominent pastors, avoiding the so-called "culture war," or saying, you know, I'm Team Jesus. I don't want to get caught up in this conservative, progressive type thing and all that. And then I would like to ask those pastors, what exactly is the neutral position on abortion?
14:51
What exactly is the neutral position on chopping the penises off of young boys that have been convinced that they're girls? So talk to me a little bit about how just these modern pastors that just won't jump in unless they be seen as non-winsome.
15:06
Yeah, I would say that fundamentally, men have done exactly what you were just laying out. Pastors have abdicated their role as truth teller in a lot of these respects. And a lot of pastors today do want to be seen as third way on basically every major issue.
15:24
They don't want to be pinned down as conservative or progressive. They want to be some kind of confusing blend in the middle.
15:30
Doug comes a man like Jordan Peterson who doesn't care, frankly, about his cultural standing and is willing to put it all on the line to speak against transgender pronouns, which was originally what made him really blow up in the West in terms of popularity.
15:45
It's been a really sad, excuse me, decade in the church because we've seen those kind of men that you just mentioned stand up and speak. And we've seen a lot of pastors who have huge platforms and a lot of people following them and a lot of people looking to them for leadership, not lead.
16:03
And it has created this terrible situation where a lot of Christians then, and in particular, a lot of young men, are forced out of the church to get guidance on what it means to be a man, especially in practical terms.
16:17
And they end up on message boards. They end up on Reddit. They end up in the Manosphere. They end up in not good places. They've got Andrew Tate teaching them some true things about being strong and punching back against the darkness.
16:31
But then having this bevy, this coven of girls on only fans, making him money. And you just recognize, if we are effectively sending our young men to Instagram videos of Andrew Tate and his ilk, we are in a terrible position.
16:50
So I can't single handedly put the world to rights call, but what I can do is try to be a man in public and say, look, pastors, strong men of God, fathers, recover your role.
17:03
And that's what we see with Peterson. Peterson was a father and public. Peterson was willing to use strong language. Peterson did look like a man does look like a man. Peterson uses a strong voice at times.
17:16
And that's what tons of people are looking for. A lot of the young men out there today and young women are from divorced homes. They literally didn't have a dad in the home.
17:24
So we actually have a tremendous opportunity cop. Last thing I'll say, we have a tremendous opportunity because as Christians, we can fill that gap and we can fill that void.
17:34
And pastors, people aren't coming to your church because you're having a great crossfit regimen or you're super cool or something like this. In many cases, people are flocking to strong men because they're desperate for spiritual oversight and protection and leadership.
17:49
And so we've got to recognize that today.
17:51
Well, and I appreciate that. And one of the, one of the things that I've been asked about so many times over the years is how can we start a men's ministry? How can we make our men's ministry better? How can we blah, blah, blah.
18:01
And I don't know when it happened. Maybe it was a couple of years back. I started saying, how about we work on making your church man friendly first.
18:07
Let's start there. And you know, it starts with the key that we sing the songs and during worship. It starts with, you know, our men helping women get inside from the park and a lot of it's raining. Like, you know, is the content of the sermon going to stir up the heart of a man or is it meant for the women and children, which is what a lot of this has become.
18:24
But part of it again, you know, I say things a little bit differently than you, but you're a pastor and theologian, so you're special. But like most of these pastors, I feel like, can you just throw your hand down the front of your pants and make sure you still have a set?
18:34
Because at the end of the day, you're allowing things like feminism to dictate what you talk about from the pulpit and let's actually talk about feminism, because in the book, you do a great job of just briefly separating the different waves.
18:47
So first wave is equal rights. Second wave is, you know, more like division of gender roles and how we need to destroy that. Third was full law and reproductive rights. Let's be able to kill our babies so that we can have sex with whomever we want.
18:58
And then now we're in the middle of a fourth wave, which doesn't make a lot of sense because it's like gone full postmodern and it's, you know, attacking the very concept of gender, which ironically is about the most anti feminist thing that you can do.
19:08
But you do talk about how feminism has worked very hard to take a bite out of the biggest apple, no pun intended, so I'll read this quote here.
19:18
In truth, the feminist movement had long cultivated an attack on God the father. If one could erase God's male identity, then one could disgrace or display strong manhood from Christianity.
19:29
If one succeeded in this grand aim, one would largely remove strong manhood from the church. If one succeeded there, one would vanquish strong manhood in society.
19:38
I think you're absolutely right there. Tell me a little bit more.
19:40
Yeah, there's been a massive attack on the fatherhood of God. The fatherhood of God has been opposed by feminists now for 40, 50, 60 years in theological circles and church settings.
19:52
And a lot of times when you have some clip pop up on Twitter or X, I guess it's called now, of a female pastor praying to God, our mother, you think, oh, that's the radical fringe, you chuckle and shake your head, those crazy feminist theologians out there with their 50 person congregations.
20:13
But in reality, we need to know that these attacks on the fatherhood of God have had a major effect. They've, they've had a real impact in the evangelical church as well.
20:23
And they've caused evangelicals to be shy about talking about the fatherhood of God and to see God the father as father.
20:31
We are not free to revise the Lord's prayer of Matthew 6 9 to 13 and pray to our mother. We're not free to pray to a gender neutral first person of the Godhead.
20:42
We are to pray to our father. That's literally how Jesus teaches the disciples to pray. A lot of times, side note in worship services, you'll hear a pastor worship pastor pray to Jesus or pray to the spirit.
20:55
But in reality, we're supposed to honor God the father by directing our prayers to our father who art in heaven. That's how Jesus literally teaches the disciples how to pray.
21:05
That's not just a matter of a masculine name. That is the very identity of the first person of the Godhead.
21:14
John Piper got in trouble some years ago when he said Christianity has a masculine feel. And you can break down that statement in a lot of different ways.
21:24
The kingdom is fully open to both men and women. Let that be said. But what you need to know is God the father is at the head of the entire Christian faith.
21:33
And Jesus is God the son. And that's tremendously impactful for us. Feminist hate that reality. And they will go so far as to rewrite the Lord's prayer in order to erase the fatherhood of God.
21:47
That's how we shouldn't merely keep praying our father. We should show how the fatherhood of God stands behind all the Christian faith. And is that good father that everyone out there is looking for but cannot find outside of God the son.
22:04
Hey guys real quick. So just this morning I was at the doctor and on my way out the door I kind of struck up a conversation with him because this doctor used to try to convince me all the time that I needed to stop eating red meat. He had been convinced that red meat was the devil and it was terrible for you.
22:18
And then over time as he was not having read me in his diet he was kind of suffering from that. And so he is all in now and so he's trying to go carnivore like I am.
22:26
But he and I were both kind of lamenting and worrying about the fact that man we don't know where to get high quality beef. We're surrounded by all these cattle operations here in Oklahoma and there's also these online ones but you don't really know which ones to trust.
22:37
And so I've been looking for a partner in the cattle operation business and I found one and I'm very excited to tell you about him. That is why I want to introduce you to the official beef delivery partner of undaunted life.
22:48
My friends at primal beef. So primal beef is a new cattle operation owned and operated by Sean Glass. So he's a retired Navy seal that served with Jocko Willink and Jocko is also a partner in primal beef.
23:00
So what makes primal beef different from all the other fly by night beef delivery service companies here in America. It's a combo of the following so they have all American black Angus cattle.
23:10
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23:21
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23:33
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23:44
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23:57
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24:07
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24:16
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24:23
Well, absolutely. And I think beyond that too, we sell short the influence of the devil by using the counterfeit.
24:29
I mean, just look at the rainbow. A rainbow has seven stripes on it. Roy G. Biv, but the pride flag has six. So it's like the perfect counterfeit to where it kind of looks like the real thing, but it's not.
24:38
The same thing could be said. I had a author on a while ago. If you can call him that his name was Crispin Mayfield. He wrote one of the worst books I've ever read.
24:45
But in that book, he described a time when he said that God told him, I am your mother now.
24:51
And I asked him in the interview when I interviewed him, I was like, do you think that could have been Satan telling you that?
24:56
To refer to God, the father who's only ever described in masculine terms using masculine pronouns throughout scripture, that he should be your mother.
25:05
And he basically broke down in tears that I would even suggest such a thing that he didn't actually hear from God, what he claimed to hear from God.
25:12
And it got worse from there. But when we talk about what you talk about in the war on men, you say that the word of God, the Bible,
25:20
is the book that, quote, defines manhood and gives men the guidance they need. Okay. So I think most Christian men that actually take the Bible seriously would co-sign that.
25:30
But I think this is a very, very important part of our discussion, Owen, where we need you to define the true tenants, like to a tee, a biblical masculinity.
25:42
Because I feel like guys will extrapolate one or two scriptures here or there. And then they will use that and then backfill all their philosophies about manhood and how to be a good righteous moral man and modernity on top of those scriptures as a proof text.
25:56
But it doesn't work with the totality of what we see of the through lines of the gospel throughout all of scripture, including the Old Testament.
26:04
So as big a task as that is to do that briefly. What are the true biblical tenants of biblical masculinity? Yeah, great question. Fundamentally, I really start with.
26:16
Well, there's a bunch of places we can go. But first Kings two to King David dying says to his son Solomon, be strong and show yourself a man.
26:26
And then he goes on to talk about spiritual strength, walking in God's ways, keeping his commandments and so on. And so I would say that to be a man is to be a man physically and then show your manhood in terms of strength.
26:41
And that strength is grounded in the strength of God. And that specifically means two things. It means that you stand against evil and you promote what is good. So that's how I would biblically define manhood a godly man may be married may be single.
26:57
But a godly man is one who stands against what is evil by the power of God's grace and promotes what is good by the power of God's grace. This obtains for most men in the marriage relationship first, where a man takes a wife as God blesses and allows.
27:14
And she, of course, is good with that. And then they build a family and he leads her. He provides for her and he protects her. And we could go to numerous texts to talk about that Ephesians five Genesis two and others we could name.
27:28
First Timothy five as well. So a godly man is one who shows strength. And that's the exact opposite of what our culture says. Our culture says that strong men are the problem.
27:40
The Bible says that strong men are the solution. So our culture hates strong men and thinks that if it tears down strong men, all these terrible problems of patriarchy and colonialism and imperialism and related issues are going to fall away.
27:56
And we say, no, absolutely not. Strong men are the solution. But not strong men as the world sees it. We've already talked about that. We could talk about it further. Strong men as God makes men to be. And those men are Christ like men ultimately.
28:10
They lay down their lives for others, as God calls them to. They're like, excuse me, Jesus, the true man who was not one or the other in terms of tough and tender, but was both.
28:20
So those are a number of the elements we're shooting for with biblical manhood.
28:25
That's a very good encapsulation of what you elucidate in the book, but it's also so you talk about the strong man and we don't have a lot of time to get into this.
28:34
But just contrasting what you describe as the strong man are the other forms of men that are deficient, which you mentioned in the book, the soft man, the exaggerated man, the lost man, and the angry man.
28:46
Now, there are forms of those men that take the best parts of those categories that makes part of what you describe as the overall strong man. But guys, I just got to tell you, we're not even going to be able to scratch the surface on the majority of this.
28:59
So you do need to pick up a copy of the book to check it out. It is in the show notes, but I did want to talk specifically about, and I think this relates to the overall discussion about biblical masculinity.
29:10
But it's the seeming, and I use that word very specifically, dichotomy between the lamb and the lion, right?
29:18
Or as you describe in the book, the servant and the warrior, because in the book, you say this quote, Jesus died as both a servant and a warrior stated another way on the cross Jesus served as both lamb and lion.
29:34
But we don't see it that way. Oh, and, and I talk about this all the time and I will keep doing it. If I go speak to a group of men and I have them raise their hand wins if in the last year your pastor has mentioned the lamb of God, every hand goes up.
29:46
And then I have them put their hands down. I say, how about the lion of Judah? Two, three hands in a room of a hundred guys, that type of a thing we don't talk about the lion of Judah because he's scary.
29:57
He's unpredictable. He comes back with a sword in his mouth and a tattoo on his leg and a robe dipped in blood. Like, it's, it's a hard thing for us to wrap our minds around, you know, cutesy, wootsy, Danish soft feature Jesus.
30:10
That's the one we like, you know, the somehow blonde haired blue-eyed Middle Eastern Jew. Like, that's the Jesus that is more cute and cuddly.
30:17
That's the lamb that we think about. But don't you think this, this creation of a dichotomy between the two is overall having a deleterious impact?
30:26
On our discussion of biblical masculinity.
30:29
Oh, definitely. I mean, we're mostly being fed Jesus as sacrificial lamb. Jesus's sacrificial lamb is humongously important because if Jesus does not lay his life down, looking weak for us, then we have no salvation.
30:46
But the reality is that in biblical terms, the lamb is the lion and the lion is the lamb, as you noted a minute ago.
30:53
And so when Jesus comes to earth, he is enacting warfare against the devil.
30:58
This is seen in Matthew 4, 1 through 11, where Satan himself recognizes the massive threat, truly the omnipotent threat that Jesus presents to Satan's anti-kingdom, dominion of the world, that is.
31:12
And so tries to win Jesus over to his side. And then what plays throughout the Gospels in one chapter after another, the four Gospels of the New Testament are these confrontations.
31:22
Between Jesus and the demonic realm, one demon after another. Those exorcisms are not just Jesus demonstrating his divinity. That's very true.
31:32
But those exorcisms and those encounters between Jesus and demon possessed people and Jesus going to synagogues and meeting wicked rulers there and these sorts of things who are literally indwelt by demons.
31:45
This is showing us that Jesus is conducting his whole ministry in the context of warfare. He is warring against the devil. He has come to cast out the devil.
31:56
He's come to bind the strong man, Matthew 11, 29 to 30, and Matthew 12, 1. And so that's what he's doing.
32:04
He is casting out Satan's power from those Jesus ministers too. And that all culminates, as we have both said, with his death on the cross. When he dies on the cross, by atoning for the sin of his people, by satisfying the just wrath of God the Father almighty on the cross.
32:22
Jesus is defeating Satan in the lives of his people. He's overcoming the devil on our behalf so that, Hebrews 2, 14 to 18, the devil no longer has the power to accuse us of our sin once faith has locked in for us and we've repented of our sin.
32:39
Jesus is now our king, our warrior, Savior, and the devil has no hold over us. The devil still attacks us, but the devil cannot guiltify us, cannot condemn us. And so Jesus is weak in a worldly sense in that he dies.
32:55
But in his weakness, he is massively strong. And that's very important for our discussion of true manhood.
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33:31
Well, that's how it's so difficult for specifically Muslims to even look at Jesus as potentially the son of God because they see him as a prophet and those types of things, but they're like, "You're Savior, can't die."
33:42
Like, you know, they follow the ultimate strong man in Muhammad, at least in their view.
33:46
But at this point in the conversation, some guys might be like, "Okay, this is all kind of philosophical, maybe a little bit theological, maybe a little bit teleological if you want to go that far."
33:55
But you don't just stay there. Some of these Christian men's books, they kind of stay in the ethereal and they don't really get practical towards the end of the book.
34:03
You do actually do some practical application for men, so you even have a little bit of a list of some things that men could seek out and try to do.
34:11
So teach your family biblical truth through family devotions on a regular basis.
34:15
Join a church that stands upon the Word of God and teaches biblical manhood and womanhood.
34:19
Talk to your wife about how Scripture has transformed your worldview.
34:22
Listen to where she is and pray with her. Ask the Lord to lead your family to unity and truth.
34:27
Calmly and patiently lead in making changes in your roles in the family life.
34:31
Where things get sticky and disagreements persist, go slow, use patience and consider talking with a biblical counselor to seek oneness.
34:38
And you keep going from there. You really lay it out there.
34:41
But that kind of seems like a step-by-step way of being a spiritual thermostat in your home and not a spiritual thermometer, if I could say it that way.
34:51
Why is it so important for men to not just read the book, not just go to the conference, not just buy the t-shirt,
34:57
but to actually put in those day-to-day disciplines to control these types of things inside their household?
35:03
Manhood is always supposed to be practical. Manhood is supposed to be lived.
35:07
And so that's really where everything builds and leads toward.
35:10
As men, we're not supposed to be theoretical men. We're supposed to be actual men.
35:16
And if we don't make these callings tangible in our home, for example, many of us being called to marriage,
35:24
then really we are not offering the world what God would have us offer.
35:29
We want the world to see that God transforms men. God makes men strong.
35:35
But God doesn't make men strong in all the ways that the world expects.
35:39
You mentioned exaggerated manhood. I talk about this, but you've got Samson, for example, in Judges 13 to 16,
35:46
who is very powerful, very sexually attractive, it appears to women, at least he thinks he is,
35:52
and able to basically impose his will on others.
35:55
Well, that's a version of the Andru Tate vision of manhood that we were talking about.
36:00
What we need to do is show the world by our own life that that is not what God would have a man be strong to do.
36:08
He's not strong so that he can impose his sinful will on people.
36:11
He's strong so that he can start leading his home. He's strong so that he can now disciple his son.
36:16
He's strong so that he can love his daughters and protect them.
36:19
He's strong so that he can build a vocation. He's strong so that he can serve his church.
36:24
Manhood is supposed to be felt. It's not just supposed to be talked about.
36:29
And what I see in evangelical circles is that there is, in some places, a lot of talk about manhood.
36:36
But talk is cheap. What we need are men who put these things into action.
36:41
We don't need fancy men, Kyle. We don't need men who are fancy in the eyes of the world.
36:46
What we need are men who are strong in the grace of God and get things done.
36:50
And when you look around you, even in society today, still, in 2023, you drive past construction teams.
36:57
You drive past projects on the highway, let's say.
37:01
Usually still, even in our gender neutral age, you will see crews of men doing hard things.
37:08
You will see men up early. You will see men up on houses.
37:12
I marvel at these construction crews in my town here in Arkansas.
37:15
As these dudes balance on a roof, you know, that I would be terrified to be on, frankly, I hate heights.
37:20
But they're just there up, you know, nonchalant and unafraid.
37:24
And we need, as Christian men, to have a whole batch of those kind of men who don't just sit at a Bible study at 630 a.m.
37:32
But who put this stuff into practice and who show their strength, their God-given, grace-driven strength to the world.
37:41
Well, I think as you're describing this, I was thinking about, okay, what are the aspirational identities for young men, for even men that are in my, you know, mid 30s with a couple of young kids?
37:54
The aspirational identity should be eldership, it should be eldership or the elders of their church.
38:00
The problem that I've seen is I've even heard people in my church say that, yeah, if someone seems like they would really like to be an elder, we probably don't want that person because maybe they're a little bit too ambitious.
38:09
And I was like, wait a minute, so you just want a bunch of yes men.
38:12
You don't want any like ambitious, like fired up men because for me, I'm like, you know, I don't think I'm qualified to be an elder right now.
38:19
But I think that someday I could be.
38:21
And it's because of, you know, sanctification and growth over time and maturity.
38:27
But then you will read through what you see in 1 Timothy, you know, an elder needs to be above reproach, a husband to one wife.
38:33
So reminded, self controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not a drunkard, not violent, but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money.
38:41
And it goes even further.
38:43
The problem I guess I see is for fighters like me, people that are willing and desirous for a fight to be able to push back the darkness that we see in our culture and in our world.
38:53
That is just branded outright as, well, you're being quarrelsome.
38:57
I was like, well, yeah, if I'm being quarrelsome about the color that you painted the sanctuary. Yeah, that's pretty stupid.
39:02
But if I'm being quarrelsome about the fact that our church does nothing to support women that have chosen to keep their babies as opposed to murder them, like, I think that that's worth a quarrel.
39:10
Does that make sense?
39:11
Yeah, fundamentally, we've got to see that one of the major traits of toxic masculinity as defined by our culture is assertiveness.
39:19
Another one is risk taking nature aggressiveness. So those traits in men that are in us innately, men on average have 2000% more testosterone than women.
39:30
Those are all seen as bad now.
39:32
Those are seen as poisonous.
39:34
And the man who is rewarded today in both our secular culture and even Christian culture is too often the soft man, the man who makes no dent, the man who is passive, the man who doesn't cause a stir, the man who never raises his voice, the man who never raises his voice.
39:48
The man who was known above all for being nice and winsome.
39:54
Men of God should bear the fruit of the spirit. Galatians 522 and 23, we should be gentle.
40:01
We should be self-controlled. We should be open to reason. We should be meek.
40:05
Moses was the meekest man on the face of the earth, numbers 26-3.
40:08
So again, it's not one or the other in terms of toughness or tenderness.
40:12
But we have to recognize that in too many evangelical contexts today, tenderness is rewarded and toughness is outmoded.
40:20
And that's just not good. You've got to have men who lead with strength.
40:24
You've got to have men who are actually men. You've got to let boys be boys.
40:28
Do they need shepherding and training and nurture and correction?
40:32
Absolutely they do. Do we men need all those things at some level? Yes, we do.
40:37
But you can't stamp out manhood in a man and then expect that your church or your society is going to thrive.
40:44
It's not going to be the case. And in reality, Jordan Peterson has said this well from his position, his worldview.
40:52
In reality, though our culture says soft manhood is the future. That's the way forward.
40:59
That's how we're going to have a nice, protected, calm, nobody raising their voice sort of society.
41:06
And if we would just take out all these toxic, assertive men, then we would rid the world of these public shooters
41:13
and these evil figures who prey on people, the men who run sex trafficking businesses and so on.
41:19
Nothing could be further from the truth cop. In reality, you're always going to have until Jesus returns and makes things right.
41:27
Strong evil men and strong good men. And so if you diminish the strong good men supply,
41:35
what's going to happen is that strong evil men are going to proliferate. So we need in the church, strong good men
41:42
powered by the gospel, powered by the grace of God, or else we're all in grave danger.
41:47
Yeah, grave danger doesn't even begin to describe it. I absolutely agree with that. And I think it was even Jordan Pearson
41:52
talking about that. Hey, if you're a harmless man, that doesn't make you a good man. It makes you a worthless man
41:57
because it's like it's not about being a harmless. It's about seeming harmless when you don't need to be harmful.
42:03
It's it's true meekness. It's it's the person that has the sword she'd until they need it.
42:09
And they don't just grab it and start flailing aimlessly, but they know exactly how to use it.
42:14
And that's where you can, you know, that's what meekness is when you're making a horse.
42:18
You're making it have all of its power, but it's at the mercy of the writer, right?
42:23
And so in our context as Christians, it's having the full power of who God made us to be, but for his glory,
42:30
not for our personal glorification in Instagram likes.
42:33
That's that's so important. That was really well said there. Sorry to jump in, but fundamentally here again,
42:39
Peterson does not have the market cornered. And not only are we side by side with him as Christians,
42:45
him outside of the church, at least at this moment, we pray for him to be saved.
42:48
But we have the true man who was totally under control at all times. And that is why Jesus Christ was feared
42:57
by Satan and the demons. They did not see him as a nice man. He was tremendously loving,
43:05
welcomed the little children to himself, Matthew 19, 13 to 15. He was tender with them. He was kind to them.
43:12
But he was the one before whom they trembled. He was the one who overcame them exorcism by exorcism.
43:19
And so Jesus and not some generic secular man out there who is strong, but under control in a good way.
43:27
Jesus is the one who contained within him tremendous danger and literally omnipotent resources,
43:35
but controlled them at all times. And that's why Jesus was the ultimate foe of the devil.
43:41
This is not just high theology or something. This is very practical. If you stood before Jesus and you had a sense of who he was,
43:48
you would have known that he was very, very powerful, but he was under control.
43:54
And that would not, if you were an evil man, have filled you with comfort.
43:58
Jesus was not there just to be nice to you and smile at you. Jesus was there to wreak havoc on the kingdom of darkness.
44:05
And indeed he did. So that shapes all of this discussion tremendously. We want to be dangerous men ourselves in the right way.
44:13
Never dangerous to our wife or children in an evil way, but we want to be dangerous to strong evil men in the right way
44:21
and stand in the power of God in that respect.
44:25
I get the sneaking suspicion that some of that that you just said is going to end up in your next book that comes out early next year,
44:31
but we don't have time to talk about that today. We don't have time to talk about much else.
44:34
So this will be the last question I actually want to ask you for today because you mentioned about boys being boys.
44:38
This is a major bugaboo for me, but here's a quote from your book, "But as fathers and mothers, we should never want to stop our boys from being boyish.
44:46
We should never want to cleanse them up testosterone so they never break anything.
44:50
We should never want to medicate them so that they live in a pacified state.
44:54
Making boys timid is not a victory. Reading the earth of manliness is not a triumph.
45:00
So many boys and my boys are very, very much boys. They're three in one and they are boy, boy, boy, boy.
45:06
And they're going to go to schools and they do go to schools ran by women that don't understand testosterone at that level,
45:12
that don't really fully understand boys, even if they understand how to teach young boys.
45:16
And so as is the case for most men of young boys like that, they're suggested to give them riddling or other brain-altering drugs to basically pacify them so that they're more controllable to their detriment.
45:30
Talk to me a little bit about our, don't just talk, talk to me, talk to the parents out there that are maybe thinking about doing what the school counselor says
45:38
or has already followed through on the principal's plan for how they can make their boy a more subservient, basically little girl in the front of the classroom
45:45
and how that's really doing a major disservice to the boy and to society at large.
45:50
Boys need to be boys, whatever educational decision a Christian father and mother make for their boys.
45:56
You've got to take ownership of that and you've got to send them to a context or have them in a training situation where they can be a boy
46:04
and they are not going to be penalized for being a boy.
46:06
Now, of course, every boy needs to be taught self-control.
46:10
Every young man needs to come under the discipline of a father and ideally, by the power of God, the discipline of the Holy Spirit.
46:18
So we're not over here to say any instinct that young boys have, that's just tremendous. And if boys are acting the fool and breaking stuff,
46:26
that's just boys being boys. No, boys have to be shepherded, boys have to be trained.
46:31
That passage we talked about at the beginning of the podcast, First Kings 2-2, has David saying to Solomon,
46:37
"You darn sure better follow God. You better follow the rules, commandments, stipulations and statutes of God."
46:43
So we have a serious role to play as fathers in ushering our boys through a mixture of training and love, discipline and affection into a wise life.
46:55
We're always trying to do that. And we're not wanting to err on one side or the other. They're both essential.
47:01
You want to show affection to your boys. You want to fun with them. You also have to train them. You have to shepherd them.
47:06
But your arm around them. Most of the time, Kyle, a godly father, by the way, is not doing that by roaring around his house like some kind of dragon.
47:13
Most of the time, a self-controlled, strong father isn't actually having to peacock himself and show how strong he is.
47:21
He actually can say a calm word to his son or his daughter, and they hear him, and they obey.
47:27
And they don't obey after a ten-second delay, like a newscast, they obey. And so we've got to train our boys in that.
47:34
And I would just say to fathers out there, take ownership of your son's education. If there's a good public school for them to be in, okay, so be it.
47:44
If there's a good Christian school for them to be in, okay, so be it. If you need to bring them home and you need to set up their rhythms and you need to work with your wife so that they can be in a context that does not have them sitting for eight hours a day and lets them get outside
48:00
and lets them run around and do sports as well as school, then think hard about that.
48:05
That's a decision that many of us, I think, have really embraced in the last few years as the American educational system has gotten in such a bad place.
48:14
The Bible doesn't tell us, you must homeschool your kids. So we've got to be very careful here. I would just say, though, as in many other areas,
48:22
fathers lead, fathers must lead. Don't leave it to your wife to figure out schooling. And don't sit passively back just assuming that everything's going to work out and you don't need to speak into your boys' lives.
48:35
Take ownership. Take ownership of your son's lives. You can't save them. You can't make them a Christian. You can't even make them obey.
48:44
But what you can do is strive through much prayer, much counsel, much help from your wife who was after all called the helper of you so you're not threatened by her wisdom, her gifts, her intelligence, you're loving those, and you seek them out even as you lead in the family.
49:01
But in all of that, you want your boys to flourish. So, hey, 2023 is a strange era but it's also a great time for us to reevaluate a lot of things that we once just kind of took for granted.
49:12
The press play didn't think much about it. Kyle, those days are over. But the exciting thing about that is we can really lock in and God willing disciple our boys to know Christ.
49:23
I co-sign all of that. We covered a lot of ground today, but that's all for me. Is there anything else you want to get off your chest?
49:29
I really appreciate you having me back on. The War on Men is just about out. I got it in my hands and physical copy.
49:37
And it's actually we'll say this as we close. It's less than 200 pages in terms of actual reading materials. So that should be very exciting to men who don't always like those super long books. Hopefully they can get through it.
49:50
It's very accessible. Guys, if you're listening to this on time, it is out now. So go and pick up a copy. It is in the show. Notes the War on Men.
49:57
Owen Strand, thank you for coming back on Undaunted Life of Man's podcast. Thanks, Kyle. Appreciate it.
50:02
There you go, guys. I hope you enjoyed the return appearance of Owen Strand on the show. But before we let you go, we are going to do a quick resilience boost to add Undaunted Life or Mission as a Quipping Men to Pushback Darkness with content that forges spiritual, mental and physical resilience.
50:14
So the links I've got for you today. I've got a link to where you can go and buy your copy of the War on Men. Also a link to his last book, Christianity and Wokeness, a link to his Twitter page and his last appearance here on Undaunted Life of Man's podcast.
50:25
Thank you guys so much for listening to this episode. Wherever you're listening to this, please subscribe, rate and leave us a positive five star review. If you want to come speak live at your event or on your podcast, shoot me an email to info@undonton.life.
50:37
That's iNFO@undonton.life. Follow us on Instagram and like us on Facebook and check out our website for everything else, including how to donate to keep more content like this coming your way. Just go to www.undaunted.life and also we want to thank the band Holy Name for allowing us to use their music for our content.
50:53
The music on this podcast is our song Perpetua, which is off their self-titled debut album on Face Down Records. The links are in the description.
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I'm your host Kyle Thompson. Remember, keep pushing back darkness, keep forging spiritual, mental and physical resilience, keep seeking the lion of Judah.
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