Beyond Stereotypes: Redrawing the Path for Male Discipleship ⚓

00:00:01
Speaker 1: The world is becoming increasingly proficient at telling stories that deny God. As such, we need Thinking Christian to become as natural as breathing. Welcome to the Thinking Christian podcast. I'm doctor James Spencer, and through calm, thoughtful theological discussions, Thinking Christian highlights the ways God is working in the world and questions the underlying social, cultural, and political assumptions that hinder Christians from becoming more like Christ. Now onto today's episode of Thinking Christian. Hey, everyone, welcome to this episode of Thinking Christian on Doctor James Spencer. I'm joined again by doctor Rshiesch Farmer and we're continuing our conversation about Biblical manhood and today we're going to be talking about redrawing the map. So last time we talked a little bit about why the maps are failing, and the maps are failing in part because they are inscribing really a representation of reality that's rooted more in cultural ideas, the reigning ideas in the moment, as opposed to mapping out what it really means biblically to be a male disciple of Jesus Christ. And so that's my fundamental thesis that's sort of where we've been pursuing, and now in this episode, we're going to talk a little bit about redrawing that map and what that looks like, and so to do that, one of the places we're going to look today is Matthew six. Matthew six is a passage that I've reflected on a couple other places at different times. But part of the reason I really like it is because Jesus is explicitly teaching his disciples something here he's walking around with him. What sort of the scene you sort of get is he's teaching them and he's looking out and he's seeing these different practices that are being done by the hypocrites and then the gentiles, and so with regard to the hypocrites, he sees them giving praying and fasting inappropriately, and he doesn't reject the practice. It's not like he tells the disciples, okay, prayers out because they've screwed it up for you. You can no longer pray anymore. What he says is, look at how they're doing it, and do it differently. And then he looks at prayer, look at how they're doing it, and do it differently. In each case, especially with the hypocrites. What he's trying to get the disciples to understand is that these hypocrites are using the practices of prayer, giving and fasting, or actually in the passage giving prayer and fasting. So they're using these in order to gain standing within the community. So the practices are ordered to the powers that be in the world. And what Jesus is telling his disciples is, look, don't use these practices in that way. The way you want to use them is to order them toward the power that is God, and let God reward you. Use these practices as a way to honor Him, as a way to live out life in the kingdom. Don't use them in order to gain standing in the world. Now, how does that relate to the masculinity conversation we've been having. I would argue that many times what we're looking at when we look at the literature on biblical manhood, we're actually looking at something more like what the hypocrites are doing than what the disciples are told to do. That these teachings are more in line with what it looks like to be a culturally appropriate man and to be seen as manly within the culture and to accrue whatever benefit that might have as opposed to looking at this and saying, what does it look like to be a male disciple of Christ and to use our bodies, our maleness for whatever language that might be in order to serve and build the Kingdom of God. So that's sort of the quick introduction to this, and we can dive into a deeper or go a little different way Ashish, but yeah.

00:03:51
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I think an initial point to make I appreciate that introduction to what's going on what we think of as the Sermon on the Mount. An initial point to make in this is even the way that you described it is instructive in so far as what we're not trying to do. It could be very easy to hear us and say we're saying down with any cultural articulation. Yeah, that's actually the opposite of what we're trying to say. We're trying to say, inevitably, we're making a cultural articulation, a cultural interpretation. And the trouble is when we lose sight of that. Well, as we look at the Pharisees here and we look at the way that Jesus is responding to them in Matthew six, and we compare that to what he's trying to say to these other people. It's it's worth noting that there's a cultural scenario at play here. The people Jesus are talking to are the ones that are the ones that the Pharisees have said, you're not living into Toron, you're not living into the right, the right way of the Law of Moses. And at the same time they've elevated themselves. Right, we are the ones look at us fall. It's a map, right, for better or for worse. They've got a map, and they're trying to tell these people, let's say, let's have the most optimistic and charitable interpretation. The Pharisees are trying to tell these people, stop doing what you're doing, do this instead. Yes, and on that basic level, that's not the problem. But what Jesus is doing when he comes to them is he's saying, you know, the overwhelming theme that comes through in most of these sections of the Sermon on the Mountains, you hypocrites, and you hypocrites are each time they're religious leaders, right, And that's instructive to us because he's now speaking into that same cultural setting to say that you've established a map that elevates yourself at the expense of others and deflates others to the elevation of yourself, right, right, So the so the way to look at this passage, For instance, at the beginning of chapter six, verse five, when Jesus says, and when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites, for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door, and pray to your father, who's in secret, and your father's sees in secret, will reward you. It can be very easily to principalize that and say, and I've heard this done plenty with this particular passage, and to say, therefore, what God is telling us is that all of our prayers should be done in the privacy of our own room, by ourselves, or perhaps hiding in a closet. No public prayer. That's a really odd thing. Then when you put that alongside what Jesus's upper room discourses. Right, in many ways, it is a gigantic prayer in front of others, or the way that Paul is speaking to the churches, where he from time to time even says pray with and for one another. Right, he's he's he's inviting that corporate. So the idea here is not to read this in an overly wooden way, but to understand that when you have this dynamic, this this harsh critique, you hypocrites, that what Jesus is trying to do here is that these people who've been who've been barred, who've been marginalized from being able to be the ones who are praying with and in front of the congregation. He's saying to these hypocrites, these religious leaders, maybe instead of critiquing them, be more like them. He's flipping the switch right here, or flipping the script. Yeah, I think he's I think you see the same thing coming up later on in the sermon in the Mount Chapter seven. This really interesting passage. I've heard it preached a lot. You probably have aswell. James, uh enter by the narrow gate, for the gate is wide and the way is easy. That leads to destruction, and those who enter enter by it are many. Now what's interesting about that chapter seven, verse thirteen is that you've got this this gate that is narrow, and you've got this gate that is wide. And then you've got this road that is wide, and you've got this road that is narrow. But when you get to verse fourteen, we move from nouns and adjectives to suddenly what Grammarians would call a passive participle. So the idea here is most translations it says something for the gate is narrow. What it actually says in this passive voice is the gate has been made narrow, which I think is significant. It shows sort of the ways in which we've made these maps. We've received these interpretations, we've made a map out of them, and we've tended to treat this passage as a you know, very few people are going to follow Jesus and make it. And even those who say they're following Jesus, we're going to critique them to know end, just make sure right, and the Biblical managed conversation has been built into that. It's been a map to say, be the right kind of man, because if you're the wrong kind of man, implicitly you're on that narrow path. But actually this is a message about the Pharisees, the religious leaders. What they've done, They've made something narrow which didn't otherwise need to be narrow. Right, there's no reason to say that the gate that you should follow, the gate of life, could also be wide. It's sort of the idea there, which I find really instructive. Again, it's it's a cultural interpretation. You can't but have a cultural interpretation. And the question for our patterns, as we've decided we're going to call them, is what does that look like now when we're talking about our environment, what does it look like when we're talking about man. The goal here is not to say we've created a cultural man or men, or we're trying to say, you know what, we've prioritized the ancient Near East men. What you need to do do is you need to figure out what these hebrew Men wore at the turn of the of the clocks from BC to a D whatever you call that, and that's what you gotta wear, and that's what you got to you gotta eat what they ate like. No, it's understanding the pattern of the flipping of this switch. This this very very intentional and harmful narrowing of a scope which Jesus is bursting open here to say, you know what, you marginalize people. You very much have the ability to live in the way of life, and the answer is not to do it in the way that these religious leaders have told you. Well, the same sort of thing can be done here right where we can say this sort of very narrow scope of discussion of biblical manhood can be opened up, and rather than saying we reject manhood, we can say there's there's a variety of ways to be a man that can be still, paths that honor what it is God has made us to be.

00:11:02
Speaker 1: James, Yeah, I mean, I think when we're looking at these texts Matthew six and seven, and I think that observation you made on Passage or on Matthew seven is really interesting. But I mean, if we go back and look at the Lord's prayer, right, this is it grows out of this point that Jesus makes, like look at how the Pharisees are praying, look at how the gentiles are praying, and then the disciples, depending on which gospel you're in, and Luke, they actually asked Jesus to teach them to pray. Here he kind of volunteers it. Right, Do not be like them. Why, for your father knows what you need before you ask him. So instead of throwing up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, which you get this impression that the Gentiles, just because they don't know who God is, they don't really under stand ward they're serving. They're sort of doing the let's throw the spaghetti at the fridge and see what sticks sort of method of prayer here. And so you've got to throw a lot of spaghetti against that fridge, right, because you want some of it to stick, right, And Jesus is saying, you don't need to do that because you know who your father is. But this mode of praying, I'm sorry, your father knows you, right, That's why you don't have to do this, because your father knows you. And so I think that this mode of praying is instructive for how we go about thinking about anything in our lives, especially when we think about manhood. Our father knows who we are, and so we have to enact the practice of being male in a different way. And so you know, as we look at this, this prayer that Jesus is teaching them is like what for versus long it's almost nothing, right, but it conveys so much about what it is to be a follower of Christ. One of my favorite portions of it. I mean, it's all really good, and I do it real quick. But you know how it will be your name, Your name is holy, your kingdom Come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. There we have this dependence and desire for God's will to be done. There's a subtle subjection of ourselves to God's will, not our will. We want God's will to be done. Verse eleven, give us this day our daily bread. Look, don't give us more than we can use. Right, give us what we need in every moment. We're not praying for prosperity. We're praying for sustenance. And there's a check on our desires in that phrasing. And then you have and forgive us our debts, as we have also forgiven our debtors. Now that's going to come up again in verse fourteen and fifteen, so I'll kind of leave it aside for the moment. And then in thirteen it lead us not to tenation, but deliver us from evil or from the evil one, depending on your translation. And so this last stanza is, look, keep us from moving in the wrong direction, keep us from having our desires misdirected. When we get to the forgiveness and the forgiving of debts, that's where we really see that if we know the Father's forgiveness, we must also forgive others to the same status, and so we're not holding grudges, we are actually forgiving. And that gets into complex issues. But I would just say there's a reflection of God that we are supposed to have in the forgiveness of debts and the forgiveness of debtors. That is reflective of who God is and what God has done for us. And so even in this little prayer, what we see is these are not things that yes there's a cultural aspect to them, but ultimately what we're trying to get away from is doing the things exactly like the culture would want us to do them. There's a formative aspect of this prayer that Jesus is trying to get his disciples to understand. You don't act like this in the culture. You act like that. You move away from this sort of formation, this sort of system, this sort of economics, this sort of whatever right, this sort of relationship with your peers, and your neighbors. You move away from all that and you move toward this. And the prayer is intended, I think, to sort of help shape the disciples and remind them that even in the marginal situation that they're in, this sort of prayer reminds them that they don't need much more than what they have, that God is with them, and that these practices of calling for God's will to be done, asking for daily bread, forgiving of debts, and staying away from evil are the crucial aspects that they need to be thinking about as they move and breathe in a culture that is hostile to them. And so there's this real deep intermeshing of what Jesus is trying to teach the people who are following him and the dangers that are available in the culture around them. And I think part of what He's trying to do here in Matthew six has given them the resources to in my language, resist that resist this compromise that could come if they decide that, hey, my life is kind of horrible, I'm tired of being on the margins. What I'd really like is to be a pharisee. And what Jesus is trying to say is don't do that, because that's not the goal, that's not where you need to go. And so for our discussion of masculinity manhood, I think we could say something very similar. I think there are times when and I've felt this myself. I'll give a little personal anecdote here real quick, but when I first started as a vice president a dean, I got a lot of stuff done, and I was sort of I was very aggressive, and I would do almost anything I needed to do to get done what I need to get done done. Then I got an executive coach who was like, you would not want to follow someone who leads like you do, and she was right, and so she started sort of shaving some of the rough edges off me. And what I realized was I was losing a lot more battles, but I was feeling way better about it, Like I felt more like myself losing than I did winning. And I think part of that was related to this idea that I just kept accommodating myself and compromising myself to win as opposed to being uncompromising in my integrity and refusing to win. And so this is sort of the lesson that I think is being taught or part of what's what we're seeing here in chapter six is that sort of an idea, is that the uncompromising faith that the disciples of Jesus exhibit in the face of cultural pressure to be something else is actually them winning.

00:18:11
Speaker 2: Yeah, thanks for that, James. You mentioned and meshing. Yeah, and you've got to know where I'm going with that, now.

00:18:25
Speaker 1: We'll see.

00:18:27
Speaker 2: I love it. I think in meshing is exactly one of the things, one of the patterns we're learning here. Yeah, so you walk through the Lord's Prayer and the thing that keeps coming up is it to the degree that we can take from this a lesson about what it means to be a human being, a theological understanding what it means to be human being or a biblical if you prefer that term, and within that to the degree that we can then say, therefore, that tells us something about for men how to.

00:18:59
Speaker 1: Be an.

00:19:01
Speaker 2: H The idea of and meshing is what keeps coming up to me. But in the midst of that and meshing, the reality of n meshing is that it requires us to decenter ourselves. And I think the map that we tend to usually see for all sorts of issues, not just biblical manhood, but for our current purposes, especially Biblical manhood has a very centering of the self, or centering of a group effect, right, draws circle around this group of people, and this is what you ought to be like. But what we see here is a Jesus who who teaches us to pray in a way, and we're enmeshed with the Father, but we're decentering ourselves to the Father. Yeah right, we're praying to the Father. And how would be the name of the Father? And your kingdom come, Father, and your will be done, Father, which is in direct contrast. I mean again, it's important to read it within the narrative of this. Isn't Jesus talking to just anybody. He's talking to a group, as we've already said, have been marginalized by their own religious leaders. Yes, but even those religious leaders exist within the power scenario of being a colony of an empire, right, And one of the troubles that Jesus encountered with these religious leaders is that many of them seem to have wanted Jesus to overthrow that colonizing power because they had a very particular notion of the Davidic kinghood that looked, frankly more like Saul's notion of the of the kinghood. Right, and now what you've got here is a notion of kingdom that's a decentering of the self, even if subtly, And he continued on to you know so the enmeshing and the dissentering go hand in hand. Now you got this in meshing not just with God, but this ushing with the rest of creation. Give us the stay our daily bread. Right, daily bread isn't in a plastic bag, pre baked and pre sliced in a loaf in a supermarket on the shelf. This is the staple of life, yeah, right, And it is to your point, it's something that's it's it's a it's a momentary need, our daily bread. And it's something that's made in the present, devoid of supermarkets, devoid of mass production. Right, right, forgive us our debts, as we also forgiven our doubters. That as you point out, it goes on to say, forgive others their trustpass If you forgive others their trustpasses, your heavenly father will forgive you. As difficult as it is to read that passage, it's a reminder that none of us are in this position where we can think that we were faultless. We're blameless. Yeah, maybe a conversation for another time, But I think that's sort of one of the messages of Hosea that as you keep reading through it, you start to realize the only true Hoseiah is God. Right, even to the degree that we've been wronged in any number of ways, we recognize that we're not faultless the way Hooseah was so, Joseah really only stands in the place of God and that narrative, and this passage is reminding us of that as well. And then an old friend of mine from verse thirteen, I like the way that he put it lead us not to temptation. We can get there well enough on our own. I think enough set about that, right.

00:22:33
Speaker 1: That's right, that's right.

00:22:38
Speaker 2: The idea here is it's an enmeshing. It's a dependence upon God, it's a dependence upon the rest of creation, it's dependence upon fellow human beings. And to the degree that we can pull from this an idea of manhood, that's that notion of enmeshing and surrendering of the self centering is actually more the picture that we're getting here, which sits in direct contrast. Now, I think that's significant if I can be so bold as to bring in some philosopher's' names to name drop them. A pretty significant philosophical movement in the modern age is that one brought on by Hegel, and he talks about this constant battle. It's this master slave battle, and the master wants to keep the slave as the slave, and the slave wants to overcome and make the master submit and become the new master. And he has an interesting take on what we call resolved dialectic. That isn't terribly important to know here other than to say that there is that back and forth dynamic of a pushing against one another, and others have picked up on it and taken various directions. Right, Fuku in the twentieth century wanted to speak of this innate desire for power, and this innate desire for power is inherently a corrupting reality. And so it's sort of a building off of a Hagel in that key sense, right, that the slave might be the slave in the moment, but if the slave can flip the tables, the slave will and the slave will do the same thing. Yeah, And then you've got an interesting alternative that in Nietzsche, who says, you know, the one exception that seems to be to this is the message of Jesus, to which he says, Jesus is just the weakest of them all, because he's trying to make the slave be convinced that being a slave's a better thing.

00:24:20
Speaker 1: Yeah.

00:24:21
Speaker 2: Yeah, And as we read this, I think all we can say is that to the degree that all three of those people have done a decent job of explaining the forces that plan this work, Jesus, Jesus conforms manhood and personhood to none.

00:24:37
Speaker 1: Of those three, right, right.

00:24:41
Speaker 2: He's not advocating for be a slave to someone else. He's advocating for willingly decentering the self. He's advocating for seeing oneself received from the other, first and foremost from God, but also from the rest of creation, so by the way, from our fellow humanity. And this sort of servant motif is something that I think really transcends the New Testament and really the Old Testament as well, But it lies in the face of the kind of the politics of Lord over that I think shares more in common with the Pharisees here, right, it's the kind of map that the Pharisees were giving these marginalized Jewish people. Yeah, and Jesus seems to be doing something that doesn't just simply say you know, it's good be the marginalized you as people, but insteadies trying to say, here's a window to something better. That's none of the above.

00:25:38
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think to sort of draw this in because I want to make two points just to make them transparent. Number One, in choosing to address Matthew six and seven, we didn't choose a text that dealt with manhood. Right. There's no explicit reference of here's what it means to be a man. Part of that is because it's very difficult to find those passages. Right. You either find men in roles which will address fathers, husbands, sons, brothers, those kind of things, or you see pictures of men doing things, but it's very difficult to understand whether the men are doing these things because they're men, or whether they're being narrated doing these things to demonstrate faithfulness. Right. So we see in Hebrews eleven the Hall of Faith, we see men and women right alongside each other. And so the men aren't supposed to just look at the men. The women aren't just supposed to look at the women. We see males and females being paradigms for males and females today. Right, So in choosing this text, what I think part of what we're explicitly doing is we're saying, this is about being disciples of Jesus, Right, this is what this looks like. This is the dynamic, and we have to sort of pull that over into our maleness. We have to recognize the patterns that we're seeing here, and we have to say to ourselves, Okay, me individually, as a man, what does this look like for me to be a man and execute on these principles? I think one of the things we probably won't get to, but I mean, if we go to the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount, you know, if you think about the characteristics that Jesus talks about being blessed. Blessed are those who mourn? Blessed are the meek? Blessed are those who hunger and thirst? Blessed are the merciful? How many of those resonate with cultural notions of masculinity. Not very many? Right, This is not like, hey, who's your ideal man, Well, he's somebody who's meek, definitely, definitely needs to be meek, probably needs to be mourning, should should probably you know, be poor. Right, Like, these are not the things that come out. But to the point we've been making there, these are marginal people, right, and so Jesus is saying to these marginal people, look, you're the blessed ones, but none of them are told, Hey, in order to be blessed, you need to be rich and dominant and you know x y Z, which is I think what those philosophers you're talking about are trying to do. They're talking about this constant reversal of fortune that tends to come when we look at power dynamics and uh. And one of the guys that I loved the way he deals with this is Renee Gerrard. Renes. Grard talks about memetic violence and mimetic desire, and basically the idea is he says that, you know, we're we're constantly trying to emulate someone, right, So let's say, in this context, let's just say a sheesha, I'm going to try to emulate you, right, And so I'm gonna I'm going to try to be as much like you as possible. What your art says is, what your art says is eventually that will create conflicts, because if I want to be like you, you've got things that I want, and at some point we're going to come into conflict. Right, And then he says, basically, the only person this doesn't happen with is Jesus. When we are when we've set our eyes on Christ, when we say Jesus is the one I'm going to imitate, He's the one I'm going to become. We slough off our ambitions, we slough off our desires, and we decide Jesus is going to now determine what my desires are, what my ambitions are, what my life looks like. There's no lack of resources there, there's no competition. It just ultimately comes down to us becoming more and more and more conformed of the image of Christ. Now that's a real quick overview of ourn Asia art, but the basic idea is there. It's not a reversal of fortune, although in his mimasis for like when I'm wanting to be like you, that ultimately happens. There's a conflict. And so if I'm trying to be more like you and I get close enough and I can overtake you and sort of replace you. That's the sort of power relation that Nietzsche and Hegel and all those guys are taught talking about Fuco. That's what they're talking about, this reversal. And so he comes to the same point, but he makes room for Jesus that these you know, he doesn't exactly say it like this, but the implication is that we don't have the conflict with Christ because there is no need to have conflict with Christ. There's so much abundance there that in becoming more and more and more like Him, there's only more for everyone. There is no lack, and so there's no need for competition. There's a satisfaction that comes through this. And I think that those two points. Number one, we didn't deal with the text on manhood for you know, specific reasons. But then number two, this idea that imitating Christ is what we're aiming for, and that requires us to slough off some of our own desires and our own ambitions and take up the characteristics that Christ demonstrates as he goes through life. This is the essence of discipleship. I would argue that that is what it means, at least, that's the framework through which we discover what it means to be a male disciple of Christ and ultimately an individual disciple.

00:31:11
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think it's worth maybe teasing here that this model, then that Jesus gives is one of constantly self giving.

00:31:23
Speaker 1: Right.

00:31:24
Speaker 2: So, in the in the Upper Room discourse, as we describe it in the in the Gospel of John, right before he goes to get some many to be arrested, he has this great prayer in which he talks about being sent by the Father. Yeah, but then also talking about how the Father has given him and those whom he is the Father has given to him, in this case referring to his disciples that are in that room with him. Jesus is now giving those disciples to the world.

00:31:53
Speaker 1: Yeah.

00:31:55
Speaker 2: Right. And the implication seems to me like the pattern doesn't stop. It's not the Father gave them to me, and I then give them to the world. Heart stop the ends. It's sort of an ongoing cyclical reality that the disciples then presumably have those who are given to them, who they then give to the world. Now in their case, you can argue they were going to die, that had to happen. But in Jesus' case, right, his pending death at that moment, notwithstanding his resurrection, seems indicate he can take it all back. But that's not the pattern, right. The pattern here that there is to recognize and to imitate goes against what those other philosophers are saying. Not because what they've described is false. I think they do a good job actually describing how things tend to work in this enclosure of.

00:32:48
Speaker 1: The world, agreed.

00:32:50
Speaker 2: But what Jesus is doing is precisely breaking out of that, and not just by saying, hey, you break out of that, but being the one in his very self to break out of that by giving right. So, if anything, the lesson here is that what Jesus is commending here on the sermon in the Mount to these people who are the marginized by the religious leaders, who are themselves already marginized by the evil empire, this model that Jesus is conveying here is the very model that he then ends up providing in the giving of his very self on the cross, and in that the giving of his own gifts right, the gifts that the Father gave to him the disciples to the world to continue on. That's the lesson here for personhood and to your point by implication, menhood.

00:33:41
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I always I mean, just to piggyback on that, the way I usually phrase it is Jesus' life is the only one that ever resulted in resurrection, ascension and glorification. And so he's a pretty good model what he did we should do. And I know we make a big deal out of resurrection, as we should, but the reality is Lazarus is resurrected, you know, like we have other resurrections, this resurrection is different because now it results in this ascension. Jesus has given all that authority he sits at the right hand of God, he is now glorified. And in following him and following his ways and doing what he does, not in being macho, but in being what he was right, really understanding what he did his self, giving his selflessness, his unwavering faithfulness to the Father, right, his learned obedience through suffering, you know, pulling little Hebrews five eight there, like, these are the things that Jesus did, and so these are the things that we should be doing. And if we're not mastering those basics. I think it's very and as we get into this, we'll kind of transition out of this episode into the next. But as we get into some of the ideas that are put forth by popular creatures and or the elogians in this register, what I would say is, if we aren't mastering these basics of Jesus telling people to be more ambitious, more aggressive, exercise more dominion, I think are highly problematic because they're detached from a context, and really more than a context, they're detached from a person who shapes that ambition. Who's who defines that dominion? Right, what does it look like to have dominion? To me, it looks like an uncompromising faith despite the negative consequences of the world. That's what it means to have dominion, right. It doesn't mean taking control of the earth. It means living according to the authority of the kingdom, even when living in according to the authority of kingdom stinks like that's kind of it. Our dominion doesn't usually look like dominion, just like Jesus didn't, you know, Jesus's death on the cross didn't look like victory. And so I think when when we decouple these things. When we don't root them back in the kind of stuff we've been talking about in this episode, what we're going to end up with are severe distortions of our humanity where we're going to be exercising some of these characteristics that in and of themselves are not bad, but when they are ungoverned by the Word of God, and I mean that both in Jesus sense and the Scripture sense. When they're ungoverned by the Word of God, they are going to go off the rails. They're going to be distorted. They are going to fall back into, as you said, the hegel Fuku Nietzsche sort of phenomenologically correct way of exercising these characteristics. That's just the way of.

00:36:45
Speaker 2: Things, right.

00:36:48
Speaker 1: Well'll suck all right, We'll leave it there and we'll jump in the next episode. We're going to talk a little bit more about some very specific paradigms, and so we'll dig into some of the presentations of biblical masculinity in the next couple of episodes, just to give examples of some of the stuff we're talking about more conceptionally in these first couple of episodes. So come back on the next episode ashi USh, thanks for being here and we'll catch everybody on the next episode of Thinking Christian Take Care. I just want to take a second to thank the team at Life Audio for their partnership with us on the Thinking Christian podcast. If you go to lifeaudio dot com, you'll find dozens of other faith centered podcasts in their network. They've got shows about prayer, Bible study, parenting, and more.