Discipleship, Not Dominance: Rethinking Biblical Masculinity with Dr. Kutter Callaway

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. 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 on to today's episode of Thinking Christian.

00:00:28
Speaker 2: Hey, everyone, welcome.

00:00:29
Speaker 1: To this episode of Thinking Christian on Doctor James Spencer and I am joined today by doctor Cutter Calloway. He is an associate professor of theology and an associate professor of Psychology at Fuller Seminary. Sritten a number of different books, most recent one, i think, is Theology for Psychology and Counseling. And he's also authored a new or really just started a new substack called The Wrong Kind of Christian. And that's how we kind of connected. And so today we're going to be talking a little bit about what he wrote about in his initial post on the Wrong Kind of Christian and probably a few other things.

00:01:02
Speaker 2: So cut Her welcome to the podcast. Thank you. For being here.

00:01:05
Speaker 3: Yeah, hey, thanks for inviting me on. It'll be fun.

00:01:08
Speaker 1: I don't meet a ton of people who do the depth of work you've done in two disciplines. So PhD in theology and PhD in psychology.

00:01:18
Speaker 3: Correct, that is correct? That is correct. Yeah, just brutal, glutton for punishment or something.

00:01:24
Speaker 1: Right, you finished one and decided to actually go back. It's impressive. I love I love doing interdisciplinary work. So I've read a few of your books in the past and really enjoyed them, and so really great to have you here.

00:01:39
Speaker 3: Wonderful. Yeah, and I think I told you I got onto your podcast through none other than my mom. So you come with your your name precedes.

00:01:48
Speaker 1: You, and I have a good I have a good recommendation, I hope. Well, very cool. I've been doing some work and my co host and I who couldn't be here today, but we've been doing some conversations around this notion of biblical manhood, biblical masculinity, and some of the things that have really started to bother me, particularly as my son's gotten into his twenties. Yeah, you know, and just trying to figure out, like, why is it that we're construing biblical masculinity in this way. Had some guests on over the last couple of years that you know, talked about Jesus being a model of masculinity. Didn't quite understand that fully ran across a lot of marked Driscoll's work didn't really resonate with that, and I saw you didn't either, And so I'm wondering if you can, maybe we can start out just what do you think is driving this sort of misapprehension of biblical masculinity, biblical manhood. Why is this emerging at this point? Any thoughts on that?

00:02:52
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, as with anything, I think it's complex. Right, there's probably multiple streams that are kind of over lapping and historically contingent. I do think there's we could call it an origin story, right, there is a I still believe that evangelicals in the US have are And you'll even hear this with some people that that speak on this. I won't name their names here, but I just listened to part of a podcast of a president of a major seminary and he was talking about basically still responding to the feminist movement, that that that this thing happened, and feminism happened, and it was this great evil and we have to respond to that. And and that response was this like doubling down on how on what I would call traditional gendered roles that that aren't Christian, they're just they're like post industrial Western visions of gender roles. But something was so threatening to let's call it the establishment or mainstream evangelicalism, that there's been an overwhelming response to a number of and you could also include the sort of sexual revolution right of the sixties, et cetera. And some of that was legitimate, right, like how do we steward or navigate our sexuality? That's an important conversation to have. But then when it became will you do it by adhering to these like super rigid ideas of both masculinity and then its inverse femininity, that that became the answer to what I think was a perceived threat for fear. Well kind of fast forward, Oh you want to chip in on the no, go ahead, Well, fast forward to the to now. And what I see is there's been you know, an ongoing you get the Promise Keeper's movement and other things where evangelicals still recognize some of the deep sort of loneliness of men. But then also a lot of like sexual dysfunction, and they're going, how do.

00:04:59
Speaker 2: We what do we do?

00:05:00
Speaker 3: How do we rally? And again these are good, sincere efforts, but it kind of ended up promoting a vision of masculinity that was again a very sort of what we would now call like mana sphere, sort of bra culture. And then you get to the development of politically in the US, it just happens that all these other thing forces align and now you have people in the name of Christ adopting what I think are some pretty toxic visions of masculinity as if they are Christian, and it's deeply appealing to right now a bunch of really lonely men who are more disconnected than ever, even though they're networked online, and it is really appealing. So the Driscolls of the world the others are speaking to some of those kind of implicit feelings and stoking that kind of energy in a direction that is actually really appealing to people. So I think right now it's that perfect storm of both a history and theological movement and then a moment in time where these sort of technologies and different sort of socio political movements are all kind of aligning.

00:06:12
Speaker 2: It's interesting to me.

00:06:14
Speaker 1: I can understand the response too, and I think there's a degree to which, you know, if men are in crisis, or to the extent that men are in crisis in very particular ways, that.

00:06:24
Speaker 2: Does deserve a response.

00:06:26
Speaker 1: What I've always just sort of puzzled about is why that response isn't discipleship, why it has to be this.

00:06:32
Speaker 2: Movement toward machismo.

00:06:35
Speaker 1: There were a couple of folks that I had on the show that talked about having a big monster truck at their men's rally, and you know, they're trying to get a tank, and I'm sort of sitting there, you know, as a two hundred pound tattooed guy who likes to lift weights going, I have no interest in any of that. I just don't even understand, like how we get to the point where there are certain marks of masculinity that we have to hit, and how we think that's going to be particularly helpful in leading us toward conformative to the image of Christ. It seems to me that we're putting like this cultural screen between us and Jesus and saying this is who he was when he really wasn't that.

00:07:19
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think you're asolutely right and in it. I have to stop myself sometimes and not like pull my hair out and go. And part of it is I think I'm kind of riffing here, so I'll deny it if later I think now that wasn't quite right. But I think discipleship is absolutely right. Like that is and what I would call table fellowship, that is the thing that Christian community offers the world. It's essentially a new kind of family. So what Jesus said was not oh my biological camera, who are my brothers, who are my sisters? Those who do the will of the Father? Okay, Jesus offers us like an entirely new vision of what it means to be a family as a single man, by the way, who did not demonstrate any of the sort of machismo that we're describing, and invited people to the table that otherwise would not have been identifiably in those sort of stereotypes either. They were always sort of like against the grain of what the normative vision was in their time. And to me, that is how we might think about Christian discipleship, Like how do I fellowship within the Christian community and invite others in and then what are the things that we do as disciples of this man Jesus, And that, for some reason, even within our Christian churches, is not the path that was chosen. It's this other path when it comes to specifically man. And I've heard back from a lot of women also, they're like, oh, same thing with women's retreats. It's like I don't fit that at all, and they're trying to like tell me I got to do this thing, and I don't. I don't see myself in that at all. And that's where I think you're absolutely right. The diagnosis is, well, it can't be that this came from us, you know, in good faith, following what Jesus did and lived and said. Something else is getting in between, and it can't be. To me, it has to be that's the movement of culture, right that that's where society right now, and certain segments of society, not all of it, but certain segments are saying this is what manhood looks like. And you know, unsurprisingly it skews toward the violent, the oppressive, the the kind of dominating vision. And to me, that's incredibly tragic from a Christian perspective, because of course Jesus was the opposite of all those things, and so I do, along with you sometimes kind of stand back and say where and how did we get to this place? And then maybe secondly, how do we how do we do something about it moving forward? I think that the other thing that we haven't yet given a great vision of a better, more viable alternative, And I think that's kind of what I'm I'm longing for as both a male and then as a Christian brother to my sisters as well.

00:10:15
Speaker 1: It feels like it's going to take a lot of discipline to do it, because I can even say, even when when Ashish and I my co host, have had these conversations, it's easy to fall into the language of bravado, Right, It's easy to fall back into it because it's sort of in the ether, right, it's the air we're breathing. And so we've we've got to find new disciplined ways of speaking that can convey who we are as disciples and probably who we are as male disciples, but not necessarily over prescribe that for everyone.

00:10:53
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, you know again, I'm I want to hold out hope that the gathered worshiping community is critical that we're doing something there right the life of the church that we gather together. And then you go, okay, so what is it that we do when we gather together? And is it to express the like the most sort of puerile version of what's in me and celebrate that, or is it to say, how can we create? Because again I'm not like, well, I guess when bring us up the blog that you or the newsletter that you wrote, I've talked about men's retreats, and I'm not against that, like I'm actually quite four, like, how do we get together and hold each other accountable? And you know, these are good things, but it has to somehow start I mean, against your point, it has to be disciplined and has to be a commitment, and you have to be able to allow yourself to be in the presence of people who don't think and look and act just like you. And that I think is one of the underlying issues I mean society wide, but especially with the church right now. Everyone, anytime you have the option to just leave and go do a different church, we've we've inculcated this idea that my fellowship should be comprised of people that are exactly like me like a homogeneous thing, and the moment there's an other, and that's that that discomfort is not okay, it's it's I will not abide it, and so I'm going to go find another place. So there's multiple I think layers of us having to kind of unlearn those habits. But I do think how we teach from the pulpit, how we worship, how we uh sort of liturgically shape ourselves, both in you know, let's say Sunday worship, but then also throughout the week and special occasions. I think that is the formative place where it can happen. And so you could imagine a men's retreat that isn't you know, a bunch of just barbecue and.

00:12:53
Speaker 2: With the ball.

00:12:54
Speaker 3: I mean I like barbecue too, like I like it. But it's something about how do we interact with the the sensitive parts of our ourself, the artistic sides of ourself, the the vulnerable, the fragile, the uncertain sides of ourself, and and not just explore them, but but set those up as legitimate, viable, Jesus like parts of what it means to be male. I just you know it the Bravado cells.

00:13:24
Speaker 2: And that's that's right.

00:13:26
Speaker 3: You know, it's a big shot tank. I mean, like, really was that really? Like they were trying to get an actual tank?

00:13:32
Speaker 2: Yeah, an actual thank ye.

00:13:35
Speaker 3: Yeah.

00:13:35
Speaker 1: And I was like, I don't. I mean, I've seen them at museums and air shows and stuff like that. It's cool, but I don't I don't understand, Like my kids love them, Like I'm almost fifty, I'm good without a tank, yeah, tank or a monster trug. Like, it's just not I'm not a large boy. I like, I don't like those things anymore. And great for the people who do, I suppose, but it's just not a draw for me.

00:14:04
Speaker 3: That's that's a really interesting point. I don't know if you had talked about before or intended it, but it is an incredibly sort of immature vision of masculinity as well. A seven year old boy, Yeah, he's gonna go wrestle and play with tanks and like get in fights and all that stuff. But we're not seven year old boys. And and there's we don't want to shame the seven year old self. We don't want to say that's bad. There's something still in us that is, you know, driven by the testosterone, you know. But again I'm also nearing fifty, so I got a lot less testosterone than I used to do, right, So I'm just like, that's not any so, but that is a yeah as we think through what is to come, that kind of bravado is a deeply immature vision of masculinity, and part of I think what people are longing for is like, what does an actual robust, mature vision look like? And my goodness, it would help if we started with g I think of mapping that out.

00:15:03
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think I have two questions I want to kind of dive into a little deeper, because men's retreats and men gathering together as men to do discipleship I actually struggled with when I started getting into this topic a little bit.

00:15:16
Speaker 2: At first.

00:15:16
Speaker 1: I was like, I don't know, I don't know that these things aren't going to always do more harm than they are good. And so sort of where I ended up landing was saying, no, it's really good for men to get together and talk about the cultural expectations of the moment that are putting pressure on them and seeking to hinder them from becoming more like Christ. Because I think that there are going to be those unique pressures on men, just as there would be unique pressures on women. Right, So I'd like that's sort of where I positioned it and said, if men were going to get together, it would be great if they said, hey, these are the things that are really hindering me from.

00:15:54
Speaker 2: Being a man of Christ.

00:15:56
Speaker 1: I feel like I'm being uniquely conformed to this particular culture and its vision of manhood as opposed to a biblical vision of what it means to be a male disciple. Is that how you think of those men's retreats?

00:16:10
Speaker 3: Like is that a yeah, it's a good question because I've, like you gone back and forth of like, oh, they're just rubbish, stop it, and I'm like, no, that's too that's too quick. Don't feel the baby's bathwater. And again, because I also have multile friends that they really love them, like, it's like they look forward to it, I'm like, man, I just though, so I also wanted to count that it's, you know, doing something for some people. But I do think, yeah, how you frame it, what your intentions are, you know, what the actual content of it is is important. I'd also think, I mean, again, in an ideal world, it seems like you could do a congregational retreat and have different kind of like pathways where you have some time where men get together and talk about those specific things. Women get together to other things. People that have kids and families they get to, you know, like talk about that, and people who are single and try, you know, like all of those different things that we really do overlap. But it'd be good if you, I think if you could imagine a retreat where you're able to engage with each of those issues and those smaller kind of affiliation groups while still recognizing we actually can't have this conversation without our sisters in Christ in the room without you know, so that they too, because obviously the more the reason that they now use the language of toxic masculinity is because it's it doesn't just affect men, it also affects women or vice versas. Yeah, so how do we like It's not simply about how do I, as a man individually navigate this world as a disciple, it's how do all those pressures inform the larger body? So so I think that would be interesting. It's I've also thought through. I have a book on marriage. It's called Breaking the Marriage title, and it actually started in my I don't title my books the publishers I do, but I think I was titled sex Saints and singleness was the first phrase that I was going with, because sex cells baby just like barbecues. And the reason is because we got to this point of going how it really is hard logistically to get married people with kids together with single people, just like I feel bad making my single friends adopt the schedule of my kids, but I don't have a choice as a dad like I have to. So it's actually kind of hard. However, I like, I think again, all these affiliation groups where now you have ministries that are just for single people or just for men, actually prevents us from doing what is actually real world difficult relationship. Christian community is hard. It's really hard, and it's really inconvenient. And it's kind of like when we went through COVID and all of a sudden, people are like, oh, I could just do this online. I don't have it's very convenient. It's like, yeah, and that's terrible, Like that it is so convenient means you don't have to accommodate it, you know, like I no longer have to accommodate these differences, and so I am as with you. I am in a moment of maybe transitions the word these days, but I'm thinking through the value of those isolated sort of affiliation things. At the same time, I don't want to too quickly go there's some I have some perfect like solution that's going to get men in a room, get them feeling like they can talk about things that they know specifically, but then also not have it become what often they become. But I do know, whatever it is, it's difficult, and it requires us to make some sacrifices to actually get there, and it can look messy.

00:20:01
Speaker 2: Well when we think about Jesus.

00:20:08
Speaker 1: The conversation that I've had with folks have been interesting, and I would say some of the people I've had back on the podcast again, but also some of the things I've read. So I'll use You mentioned Driscoll in your piece, and you talk about him.

00:20:22
Speaker 2: I'm reading from it.

00:20:22
Speaker 1: It says I realized Driscoll is an easy target at this point. He's become almost a parody of himself in the way that he projects his laughably muscular form of Christianity. I read his book Act like a Man. I don't know whether you've ever taken a time now. So here's my question about Jesus, and I think it's informed by some of the ways that Jesus is sort of co opted into this masculinity conversation. There are sections in Driscoll's book where he talks about men expressing emotion and how it's not anti masculine for men to express emotion, and then he talks about Jesus weeping when Lazarus is when he finds Lazarus dead, and he says something like, but he weeps in a masculine way. Now, if we go to the text right and we see Jesus weeping and we see, you know, the other people weeping, it's.

00:21:17
Speaker 2: The same exact Greek word.

00:21:18
Speaker 1: There's no descriptive difference in the text, Like we have no clue whether Jesus is how Jesus is weeping. We just know that Jesus is weeping. But in part he leverages that to say Jesus is the penultimate male and shows us what it means to be masculine. And I think my question with that always is and I have a feeling we're gonna have very similar perspectives on this, but I don't know how to tease out when Jesus is showing us how to be masculine and when Jesus is showing us how to be human.

00:21:56
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I think that's exactly right. And tow it gets even more complicated if you follow that line of logic to say, well, wait a minute, don't aren't women supposed to be conformed to the image of Christ and Jesus? Like, does that mean there do they become men? And actually there's streams of Jewish thoughts. That was basically that, like, you are resurrected as a male, and I'm going taking all the rest of Jesus teaching together. It's like that clearly is just a non starter when it comes to what Jesus. And then later Paul would say, right, so I think yes, to me, that ends up, you know, only knowing what you just told me, so and I trust you. Yeah, that really is an ironic way to say to me. Probably what happened is I'm just putting myself in his second he was he had a thesis, here's here's what it is. And then he's like, ooh, I've got these the counter arguments that are easily thrown in my face. How do I rebutt it, and I was like, oh, it's because Jesus wept masculinely, like clearly that and so but yeah, that's like completely made up. Like in the end, it actually undermines his thing, because in fact Jesus wept, and if in fact he said now again first entry Palestine, I think weeping was also not gendered and was a very normal thing for men to do. We've got to recognize now that it's not is a more recent epimation, but it clearly undermines his point that our gendered stereotypes that emotions are bad are undermined by Jesus. And then he kind of like gives it and then pulls the rug out from under you and say, ah, but actually it reinforces the very gender stereotypes that I'm bringing to the text. So I'm with you. I think that's uh, there's multiple problems with that that exegesis, but especially then the practical application as it concerns men and women. But it is the common thread. I mean, some of the people that have responded to my sub stack initially like they'll go, well, you know King David, he was a warrior, and I was like, yeah, and the Bible's pretty clear about condemning most of his violent, oppressive acts and actually lifts him up for his poetic, sensitive vulnerability. So even there, you're the example, but people really want to press into this warrior strength. I'm gonna cry masculinely and I want to be humble enough to say I want to be able to you know, what is it, iron man your argument and say I want to see really how you're getting there and acknowledge I'm imperfect and I don't have the absolute right interpretation. But some of these I'm like, it's just not passing the SNIF test. That doesn't work in terms of who I know Jesus to be. And that's just really good example.

00:25:10
Speaker 1: I think, Yeah, I've seen there's other aspects of Driscoll's work that I think are odd in that same way. You know, Paul didn't get married because he died too soon, you know, those kind of things, and you just sort of sit back and you're like, well that he did talk about singleness and why he was single.

00:25:29
Speaker 2: And we're just going to ignore that.

00:25:31
Speaker 1: Bard Like, but then I go to, you know, maybe some more robust theologians, some of the folks in the Biblical manhood sort of like John Piper or whomever, and I look at their exit Jesus, and I see them slipping into this at certain points, like a reading in back of that masculinity into it. I can remember one of my seminary professors talking to me, or not talking to me, talking to the class and telling us you should make sure that your wife never makes more money than you do. Now that's coming on the heels of him telling us most of us will be in rural pastorates, and you know, like, we're not going to be making much money. And then my wife was pursuing her pharmacy degree, and I'm like, she could literally work half halftime and make more than you're telling me. I guess I could as a as a pastor. And so it was one of those things where when I heard it, I just sort of let it slide past me, like this is just one of those weird things. But I know other people in the class didn't do that, like they actually heard it and were taking it in as really sage advice.

00:26:34
Speaker 2: From someone who'd been there.

00:26:36
Speaker 1: And you just sort of sit back and you're like, we're propagating things that are going to ultimately I think be unhelpful for people to understand who Jesus is to conform to his image. Not practically unhelpful, maybe right, you could see that working for some people, but certainly not necessary for all people.

00:27:00
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I'm with you. I mean, I support any sort of arrangement that spouses want to come up with that. It's like, you know, and there's all sorts of difference, and I have because I, you know, was shaped by similar kinds of thinking. It's even I'm often hesitant to let people know my wife does all of our budgeting like she runs she is our families like accountant. And that is good because I have ADHD and I would bankrupt us if I managed our finances just flat out. I you know, before we got married, I did not have a nice checkbook. I'm like, I think I got about one hundred bucks, you know something. And but but even that, and then also she's been at home for the last decade because of our kids. But it's going to go back into the workforce and easily can out earn me, like just easily, and having to like even attempt to prevent her from doing that or to justify it to others as if we're somehow a non you know, Jesus approved the couple, Like, it's just I don't understand that, and and so I do think though another as I you asked, like, why is this so attractive? Yeah, I can read it both in uh, you know, a what would you call it? A sort of deconstruction this way and then also a theological way if you just basic kind of uh, how do we trying to not say certain words that will trigger people? If you think about it in terms of power dynamics, it makes sense that the people who are in power would make interpretations and teachings and policies that would reinforce that power so that they keep it and do anything in their power to ensure those who might threaten that cannot threaten them. And so on that side, I go, there is a lot that men, even Christian men, Christian men who are leaders, a lot they have at stake if in fact they don't reinforce this very domineering head of everything, vision of masculinity, who controls the budget, controls the finances, cannot cannot handle the idea that a spouse would make more like, because that's all a threat. And I'm sure you've talked about this in others that it's like, actually, women in power are only a threat to mediocre men. That's who's a threat to If you're actually a confident, well qualified, capable man, having a strong capable woman, either as a spouse or a college or something, not a threat at all. Right, And so it's interesting that you get I don't want to call them all mediocre, but it helps for the mediocre of our of our agender to instill that kind of power dynamic at every level of the institution. Theological side I've been thinking through, which I find strangely tone deaf or ironic or just again bad Exto Jesus, is that the the lordship over women, the dynamic of that power or that power dynamic is directly related to the fall biblically right, and yet it's held up as the way that God designs. Yeah, like wait, no, that's a you are replicating the results of sin entering the world when you prop that up as the ideal. And I don't for some reason, it doesn't seem that people kind of go there. It just you know, goes to Ephesians or wherever, which I think is also a bad Exo Jesus, but still I find that interesting that that theologically it makes sense that broken men would leverage their biological strength and power to ensure they always have access to power and that's not threatened. And so I think both in a theological way, I go, that's that is, I think a reflection of sin, what I would call the sort of sinful structures that we inhabit. And it's also I think ideologically you can read it as a sort of power imbalance that the powerful will always try to wield it.

00:31:28
Speaker 1: I had I don't even ever read her stuff on this, but Caitlin Batty wrote a series of articles on Substack, the evangelical bro Code.

00:31:35
Speaker 2: Are you familiar with these?

00:31:36
Speaker 3: Oh? I don't know if I read that one, but I know I love Kate and LEAs. She's great.

00:31:40
Speaker 1: Yeah, So she was on and we were talking about the evangelical bro code, and you know her her ideas that within Christian organizations, men take care of men, and so there's this bro code in the organizations and if you're a if you're a guy, you know, you you kind of get special treatment. The idea, I'm one of the one the one of the conversations I remember is, you know, because the men are afraid of falling into sexual sin, they won't meet and mentor women, and so then the men get special treatment.

00:32:07
Speaker 2: And it's sort of this.

00:32:08
Speaker 1: Weird structural problem within organizations. And I sort of looked at her work and thought to myself, I agree with everything she's saying pretty much about what it does to women, but it also does really horrible things to men. Like this is holding both of holding everybody back, because it's not creating that sort of context of challenge and pushing people forward, helping them understand who they really are, what their capacities are, what their limits are, you know, where they need to improve. You're not showing any of that when you fall into these sort of bro code moments. And I think that there's a sense in which a lot of this sort of bravado and masculinity that we're seeing in the church now is going to privilege a segment of men who probably are shouldn't be in charge, that are are leaning into immaturity really in order to assert themselves. The interesting part that I think they're bringing up sort of that theological side, is that sometimes.

00:33:21
Speaker 2: There's a.

00:33:23
Speaker 1: There's a real academic or biblically faithful air that is used to sort of prop that up. And I know you've kind of written on the SBC. I don't necessarily want to go into that unless you're comfortable with it. But I'm kind of starting to see certain connections that I didn't see before. Right when I look at just the straight complementary and egalitarian debate, you sort of sit back and go, Okay, well choose either one. You know, the complementarian isn't necessarily you know, engaged in this sort of misogynistic bit. The egalitary isn't necessarily into this feminist ideology kind of stuff. But I think coming at it from this angle of, you know, Biblical manhood as sort of machismo and as sort of bravado, it's hard not to begin seeing that and some of what's going on in the SBC right now.

00:34:19
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, And so I don't know, I don't know whether you want to comment on that or not.

00:34:24
Speaker 3: Yeah, uh see if I can pack. So, I think you're right. And and for the record, there are non misogynistic complementarians. I mean that's just true, one hundred percent.

00:34:37
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:34:38
Speaker 3: Good, just if anyone's listening. In another substack, author and friend of mine, Danny Treewick is actually Australian theologian and she has a couple of books on singleness but she that are really great and her substack is good. But she's been writing the last couple of weeks on what it's like to be a complementarian, right woman right now? Right? So she's Yeah, so she's person that I think you could trust if you want to kind of go that rout. However, specifically with the SBC and the newsletter that I wrote on it was I think it's telling if all we had with the SBC was their move to exclude women from not just the title of pastor, but from even functioning in any sort of role, which I still practically don't know how that's going to happen, Like they'll just have to stop maybe going to church, I don't know. But Okay, if that's all you had, you could go. Well, maybe the charitable read of that is they really are just sincerely trying to enforce their interpretation of scripture that they really do think men should exclusively be in these roles, and like, sorry, that's what it says, right, okay, But where I go not so fast is they're ecclesiology. This gets back to where it's like these conflicting theologies, they're a theology already demands of them that they cannot they being the convention, cannot dictate to local congregations their decisions about this. That is like a distinctly Baptist thing for theological reasons that Baptists throughout history have said. Now, some Baptist churches, and many of them did not ordain women, but some could, And I mentioned in that article minded the ones that I was a part of. So if you, on number one, you have to violate your own ecclesiology to come up with this decision to marginalize women, that raises a red flag. And then the doubly raises a red flag when in the same calendar year they invoked that ecclesiology meaning we're all autonomous congregations to say we can do nothing about sexual predators who might be pastors. I'm going to me. That is an impossible thing to reconcile and to come to me and go, we are operating here in good faith. I'm going over here, you're protecting your bros. And over here you're getting rid of all the people that would actually call to account the violence and oppression that those bros are engaging, and in fact that is the case. It was predominantly women in the SBC saying we've experienced all of this sexual assault and violation and predation. We need to do something about it. And at the same and the same breath, they made both of those decisions. And to me, that's getting to your point of that is harmful not only for women and for children, but that does something too, And not again, not all of the call it the bro.

00:37:44
Speaker 2: The bro code, bro code, bro code, broke.

00:37:48
Speaker 3: I'm not saying everyone bro code is a sexual predator, not that, but including them or any of the other sort of distorted visions of masculinity that get animated protected, no one's calling him to account, no one's holding them accountable. As supposedly every Men's Retreat is supposed to do right, like that's what it's supposed to do, but in fact it's doing the opposite. And I often, well not often, I often think about this, but I don't know if I've said it out loud, because I was trying to work it into a stand up bit and I haven't quite got there. But the bro code, the manisphere reminds me a lot of the original Jurassic Park or any any movie address park. It's like, hey, remember remember that apex predator a long time ago that kind of like went extinct, but it just slaughtered everything in its wake. What if we what if we brought that back but added modern technology. Wouldn't that be awesome? It's like wait, what No? And that's what it feels like in the in the manisphere. It's like, all of a sudden, someone's like, let's bring back the apex, like classically horrible male and just give them technology and it's gonna be right.

00:39:00
Speaker 2: And I'm like let him explode.

00:39:02
Speaker 3: Well yeah, and I'm just like no, It's what's gonna happen is the velociraptor is gonna get out. It's gonna go nuts. And you know, like that's where it feels like. Often of that kind of the bro code is really like engineering something that that is really destructive and again filled with all sorts of in many cases, sincere people, And that I think is my It's and like I said with Driscoll and others, it's easy to kind of like go to the extremes and say but it's it's all of the like middle ground of people that are essentially doing the same thing that have I think the greatest impact on most of us.

00:39:43
Speaker 1: Agreed, And I appreciate your disclaimer. It's an innocent, appropriate disclaimer about like this isn't a blanket statement about anybody who.

00:39:51
Speaker 2: Holds a very particular position.

00:39:52
Speaker 1: It's not even a blanket statement about somebody who's in the SBC or whatever. But I do get your point about these two decisions that are made, one being we can't we can't do anything about the sexual predators because of our ecclesiology. The other is, but we can't do something about women being ordained. And you go, there would have been some level of you could almost claim a level of theological seriousness if they'd have done both. And you're saying, yes, these things are if they're sitting back going these are both worth us violating our ecclesiology to get done.

00:40:28
Speaker 2: Yep, right, it's not happening at the local level.

00:40:31
Speaker 1: We're going to violate our ecclesiology and make these two things happen. You could kind of sit back and go, hey, fair enough theological conviction. You know, appreciate your seriousness. I disagree with the one I agree with, you know, but where it's so uneven in that application, it just really feels very strange. And they almost had to have known that they would have been questioned on this. It just I don't see how they would have sat back and said, we'll make these two very divergent, you know, decisions, and and I'm sure everybody will just miss that fact.

00:41:10
Speaker 3: Well, I mean, that's the hope. I mean, I think that's often the hope is like we're moving on, you know, there's gonna be another thing that people are worried about. And and and when asked, I mean, the the you know, Executive committee basically is like, that's not our concern anymore, you know. And so it's like that that was the response when asked of like wait a minute, what and and had been passed and approved prior, like they committed to doing it. And so yeah, that that is my at least when I go into critique it. I think that's my most generous critique. That somebody replied going saying I'm assigning motive and being uncharitable. I'm like, well, okay, maybe, but all I have are their actions, and here's the consequence of their action. And I'm not trying to be uncharitable, but I actually think it's incredibly consequential. And I'm not going to sort of pull punches because someone thinks I'm lacking charity by calling those things out.

00:42:08
Speaker 1: But I don't think pointing out an inconsistency is uncharitable. It's just it's an inconsistency, and so here it is.

00:42:15
Speaker 2: I think.

00:42:18
Speaker 1: Ashiesh and I talked a little bit about the sort of notions of masculinity in relation to bond servants in the Bible. Obviously, bond servants there could have been a mix of men and women there, But there would have been a mix of men and women there, and so there would have been men, and so you have to ask yourself how to the instructions of bond servants advance them toward any sort of notion of masculinity that is now being put forth as a biblical masculinity. They're not told to enlarge their dominion. They're not told to, you know, revolt against their masters. They're told to live lives of subservience because God is the ultimate judge there. They are to live peaceably to show respect to their masters. These are not things that you tend to get emphasized in modern notions of biblical masculinity. You know, you sort of picture you referenced Braveheart in one of your articles here, and those stack and it's like, you know, the Scots are revolting, and we find some heroism in that, and it's a great movie, and so we watch it and we have a lot of fun with it, but it's not conveying a biblical teaching.

00:43:30
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's just fun to watch, right, Yeah.

00:43:35
Speaker 1: Yeah, And so I think those inconsistency I guess my point is, I think a lot of these have these inconsistencies, and if it if it starts to become uncharitable for us to point those inconsistencies out, there's just going to be a reified, you know, notion of what these things are that can never really be called.

00:43:54
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I'm with you. And you know, classic in the history of you know, male masculinity and evangelicalism, since we're naming names and Emerger School. I where I first consciously realized like, oh, this isn't for me was reading John Eldridge's Wild at Heart and he explicitly says that a Christian man should be William Wallace, not a mother Teresa and I was like, wait what, I'm like, okay, I'm tracking with you, Like, isn't William Mallas courageous and you know, and especially at that time in my life, I was like, okay, yeah, that makes sense. But then to like take are like a saint, a literal living saint, and say a Christian man shouldn't see her as a model, and it's like, I don't. I was like, oh, I see, this is not a conversation I'm allowed to be a part of anymore. And I do think in the United States in particular, this gets back to, you know, as we talk about sin or structural stuff, the proa code and how that I my my read of Paul's you know, rescuing against not flesh and blood, but powers and principalities. Yeah, I don't read that as they are some little disembodied spirits that are running around attacking us. I think it is these higher order, sort of emergent properties of any organization that actually operate outside of human control. It's anytime humans get together and organize, there's becomes this thing. And I'm sure you've experienced this others have. Where you go. I'm at a church, I'm at a business, I'm at whatever, and it's like, man, if I picked all these individuals and we went and started something on our own, it would look nothing like this. It's like we're we're almost victims to the machine that's making it. And I think one of the machineries of the sort of social imaginary of Americans writ large. But then American Christians is deeply militaristic. And it makes sense like we're about to celebrate the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of America, right and and and it's based in like our successes in wars. It's we have the biggest military out there, like this vision of what it means to be. And in the past, we were always on the side of the good, right, Like it was that equals good and so holding up people like a William Wallace holding up people like you know, I mean, well, Mel Gibson was in the Patriot, He's been in a bunch of like war moves like ah, and again I'm a sucker for it. I'm like, yeah, go go Mel. But that has so informed, I would even say infected the way we understand not just the good, but male Christian sort of visions of masculinity. What we're called to do. It's back to that's why we're trying to find a tank to come to a thing, because it's it's almost inseparable as Americans, this idea that William Wallace is actually a better paradigm than Mother Teresa, and it's it's unsettling. I actually think it's sub Christian deeply. But it is the powerful currents I think that we're operating in. And that's why I describe it really as a the powers and principalities that we need to wrestle with, and that those are hard, they're hard to get at, they're hard to unpack, they're hard to undo and unlearned because they're so deeply entrenched and just the background conditions of how we operate.

00:47:34
Speaker 2: I agree.

00:47:36
Speaker 1: I think that those powers and principalities yield then different temptations for men and women.

00:47:44
Speaker 2: And often what I see happening is.

00:47:49
Speaker 1: As we interact with those, especially as biblical exegetes or culture critics or theologians interact with these things, there's this sort of subtle confusion between what a man needs to do to avoid a certain power and principality in the moment and what it means to be masculine.

00:48:13
Speaker 2: You know, it's like these things are, they're.

00:48:15
Speaker 1: Tied together and confused, and so I use the We live near Saint Louis, and I always use this illustration. But when we drive into Saint Louis, we have to pass what I call strip club Row. It's these three lines of strip clubs, and I always think, I'm like, it's interesting to think about this because what the advice I would give my son about those strip clubs is very different than the advice I would get my daughters about those strip clubs, right, because there's not a shot in the world that I think my son is going to end up dancing in one of those clubs right now.

00:48:45
Speaker 2: I don't think my daughters are going to end up there either.

00:48:47
Speaker 1: But you know, they have this billboard that says school loans got you down, We're always hiring, and so you just look at that and you go, yeah, they won't end up in that strip.

00:49:00
Speaker 2: Club, right.

00:49:01
Speaker 1: But these social pressures, these economic pressures, yield different opportunities for women than they do for men, and that has to be brought out at some point. But I don't think that has anything to do with masculinity and femininity. I think that has to do with the way these powers and principalities structure us into these sort of moments and pressure us to do things that we shouldn't be doing, that are that are dehumanizing in ways and so.

00:49:31
Speaker 3: And not in doing what we consciously don't want to do.

00:49:34
Speaker 2: That's right, that's right.

00:49:37
Speaker 3: It's also it's a really good example because there's both that that, like, we're all very particular, concrete people, that's right, are pressured in different ways by even this inhabiting that same system or space. It's also the case that in sort of the evangelical past, the answer for Christian sort of discipleship is begins in ends with what does your son do and what does your daughter do? To avoid that temptation to you know, be the kind of person that says, no, okay, that's good, that's a good thing. But also Christian discipleship is to address the underlying material conditions that allow sex work to be a viable theory. And we can't so we've shifted so much to the personalized thing that we've forgotten like, oh wait, shouldn't we address the societal structures that we've set up that enable this in the first place? Yeah, it's both and obviously both of those and that's I think when it gets to masculinity, why we need to think in both terms, like how is your son affected by this, and how does he think through the shaping forces of that, and then how do we all collectively go, well, wait a minute, it doesn't have to be this way, Like we can actually address some of those structures if we think systemically about them.

00:50:54
Speaker 1: Yeah, my son's doing his bachelor's in history and theology right now in Saint Louis, and one of the things we've talked about, he had a class where they talked about sex trafficking, those kind of things, and I just said, yeah, obviously sex trafficking is horrible, like it needs to be curtailed. But I said, we've got these forms that we've become callous to that exist all around us, right, And it's not just the strip clubs, it's internet pornography, it's these kind of things. And I'm like, we have to cultivate a sensitivity to all of these things and an aversion for all of these things, because all of these things are deforming us as humans. I don't think that's a good context in which to say you know, if you you know, to be a real man, you're pushing against these things, right, this is a generative moment for you son, be masculine, you know, push these things out right. It's got to be that moment where we say, look at the way that our culture has decided that these things are good and true and beautiful in ways that God would never ever determine.

00:51:58
Speaker 3: That.

00:51:59
Speaker 1: Like, they've been accepted and pulled into our culture in ways that they just shouldn't be. That's not a masculine conversation. That's a discipleship conversation. It's a and you become complicit in it.

00:52:10
Speaker 3: I mean, I'm I'm reading, you know, with the masculinity side of things, the number of women that are proponents of being traadwives and like wanting to give up, you know, all sorts of stuff. And there they are asking themselves, how do I operate within this system in a way that I can survive? And here's how I'm justifying. So it's like the wait that means you seed all of these things that I don't think you want to want to do. And so yeah, it's that that's where it's like, Okay, we can talk about masculinity but it of course is how does this affect us as a community, as a human society, because it always has those implications. And yeah, I think in each of those different conversations, as we can think about, yeah, what does it mean to be human? And then how do our different particular bodies call us to faithful discipleship and light of that vision of humanity which runs again, if we think christianly about it, not just Jesus, but Jesus is the second person, the trinity. It runs toward people in relation, Like, there's no sense in which my discipleship is detachable from the people that I'm in proximity to, and so it has to somehow account for both of those. Otherwise, yeah, we just perpetuate those same structures that are harming us.

00:53:34
Speaker 1: I mean, you've written on entertainment and technology and movies and all that kind of good stuff. You've written on psych and this will We're getting close to the end, so I want to I'll make this our last question. But how do you I mean, given everything that we've got going on right now, there's a lot happening, how do you think we need to start re rooting ourselves so that our identity is is more tied to the local church. Obviously our identity needs to be in Christ. But in the concrete sort of let's love our neighbor, let's do this thing in our community, let's you know, let's be together as Christians.

00:54:18
Speaker 2: What do we need to do to get back there? Other than just hey, do it?

00:54:23
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know that is part I mean, like, you know, I teach in a seminary and I'm always like, it's tragic. Actually, we now have a huge online student body, which is very different than it was, say, fifteen years ago. Yeah, and so a benefit of that is a larger percentage of our students are still connected to their local congregations. Yea, right, because in the past it's like, man, the number of seminary students that weren't going to church is like, guys, this is scandalous, Like you're sitting for ministry and you're not. You know, so part of me does like I guess, stop and go Okay, it's not as simple as just go do it. But I do think the current moment we're in, there are very few places or resources or even it's not incentivized anywhere to do what a lot of people call conflict transformation or transformative conflict. And I'll often say, like graduate school just is this process where you are exposed to all sorts of ideas that are not yours and conflict with yours and challenge yours. And your job is not to like run away in chaos. It's it's to say, Okay, how do how do I account for them responsibly? How do I humbly accept you know, sometimes correction, but then also not, you know, like you don't have to accept everything, but come back to maybe original position even stronger and more convicted in light of this sort of stuff. So the whole process is this process where you sit with the dissonance of different perspectives, because that's what what we would call education is, that's what growth is, that's what you transformed, renewing of your mind is. And so I think to say simply just go back to church, but I think it's a kind of way of going to church. Maybe been riff on Kennedy right, Ask not what your church can do for you, ask what you really that like, think about it as an opportunity to encounter and expose yourself to the breadth and variety of the Christian faith. That means you have to find a kind of church to do that. But I really think that's the key to how we're going to move forward as as a community. You know the Big Sea or I guess Little Sea church, but all the churches. The only other thing too that I say is, you know, the if it's the bro code and all the stuff, we also have inherited this tendency to basically cut people off and remove each other from community when we get to those times of conflict, like I'm disowning you whatever, and that usually involves a kind of demonizing of this other side that is ultimately unhelpful, even if it's right, even if you like have a read on them. And from the psychological perspective, a big part of I think the shift that needs to happen is instead of asking, and this is like trauma informed therapy, but instead of asking a person like what's wrong with you, to ask what happened to you? So when I go into and it's hard for me to do, but when I go into a conversation with someone who's you know, they're part of the bro code, instead of just going like I already know everything about your perspective and why you're there, to rather say, Okay, what are the deeper fears, anxieties, experiences, longings underlie this conviction that you've arrived at unless I can somehow articulate that or get to there, like having a higher level, you know, conversation about how rational their thoughts are is totally irrelevant unless I can get it that sort of deep, almost intuitive, maybe inarticulate sensibility that this ideology, this perspective is actually addressing. And so that I think is we can say we're going to be around difference all we want, but until we can learn come back to going like, actually am curious about where you're coming from as opposed to I'm here to like convince you to stop being an idiot. That I think is that would be my first step, and it's been really hard, but it is I think cool.

00:58:37
Speaker 1: Now it's really helpful advice. Well, thank you again, Cutter for being on the show. I think we've covered plenty of ground and hopefully folks enjoyed this. I just encourage everybody to check out the substack, you know, cuttercallaway dot substack dot com. It is the wrong kind of Christian is what you can search and google and then I'll put the link obviously in the show notes.

00:59:00
Speaker 2: But anything else you'd like to route people to cut her.

00:59:03
Speaker 3: No, you can go. There are my websites Cuttercallaway dot com. I got a book coming out on the horror genre. So again Ron kind of Christian nice engaged in horror. But yeah, that book's come out in September, so if you want to check it out, you can find all that info on my website. But Cutter with a K, Callaway with a C.

00:59:19
Speaker 2: Cool.

00:59:20
Speaker 1: I I got the opportunity, just a dovetail on your horror. I got the opportunity to write an essay in theology religion in the office. It was a volume on the TV show The Office.

00:59:30
Speaker 2: Super fun. I love that anytime. Yeah it's out.

00:59:34
Speaker 3: Oh good, I'm gonna pick that up. I love The Office. That's great.

00:59:37
Speaker 1: Yeah anytime you you know your research involves just rewatching horror movies or old series, It's like, this is the best job ever.

00:59:45
Speaker 3: It is. I totally agree, totally agree.

00:59:48
Speaker 1: Are well, Thanksgiv for being here, man, thanks ever for everybody for listening, and we will catch you 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.