🏗️ Filling the Void: What Comes After "Biblical Manhood"?

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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 by doctor Ashish Pharma and we're going to continue our conversation about biblical manhood today. And today we're really going to be talking about, given that there is no thing that we can identify as biblical manhood within scripture, how do we encourage men to be male disciples of Christ?

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Speaker 2: Like?

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Speaker 1: What does that look like? So if we're taking something away there is no biblical manhood, we probably should put something back in it same place, and so that's what we're going to be trying to do in this episode. So, ah, thanks again for being here.

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Speaker 2: Man, great to be here, and a fair impulse. We take away we should fill that void.

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Speaker 1: It feels like we should. Yeah, we don't want. We don't want men just run around they like, oh good, I have no boundaries. It's probably not the natural state. I feel like we don't have to do much on you know, is there a biblical manhood idea? I feel like we've covered this an awful lot and the difficulties of sort of parsing out between you know, when we look at Abraham's life or something like that, we look at Jesus's life, we look at any of these characters in scripture, are you know what we're seeing? It's going to be impossible for us to distinguish, and I'll use the impossible language. It's going to be impossible for us to distinguish between what is faithful behavior and what is masculine behavior. And so I would just argue that what we're really seeing in scripture is not presentations of masculinity. What we're seeing are presentations of faith fullness embodied in male and female bodies. That's sort of the way I think about it.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree. I tend to default to that as well, unless there's a distinct reason given to guide us to think more specifically, which I don't really see very often, right, Like if there's a passage saying fathers be like this, Okay, I get it, there's specificity here. But I think another point that's worth making in that it can be easy. We've talked about this at other times, but with Greek and Hebrew being gendered languages, we have to be careful to not read into the fact that, you know, for instance, in the Greek, if it says adel foss and a del Foy brother and brothers, that it's necessarily trying to make a gendered claim. I think this is something that we in languages like English that don't have gendered languages struggle with more than those who come from gender languages where they tend to understand more that you know, sometimes a thing is just a thing and it has a gendered ending for grammatical reasons, not for social reasons or theological reasons. So when when Paul's speaking and he says a del foy too often, I've seen where people will take that to me and just he's only talking to the men. It's brothers. Yeah, when the reality of gender languages is is that for whatever reason, historically, and this is case the case in all the gender languages that I know or know of. Perhaps there's others that are not like this, But when it when it gives you a plural of mixed company, it just uses a masculine plural, right. So it's things like that that we have to be attentive to as well, when we make the kind of claim that someone could say, well, no, look that's a that's a gendered term right there. Well, well, okay, it's a gender term because every term in that language is gendered. A table is gendered, a tree is gendered. But that doesn't mean you look at the table, you know, in Spanish as a girl. It's just a table, and no one looks at it does anything but a table anyway, yep.

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Speaker 1: And we do have some of those conventions in English, although they're a little more colloquial. Usually for the end of my teaching career, I got more careful about using the word guys if I was referring to a mixed company, right, guy is technically we're usually used in a for a male's, but I would use it as sort of that collective y'all right, And so I got more careful about doing that, right with the non gendered languages. Usually what we end up doing is like she or he or he or she or male or female, Like we'll list both if we want to make it clear that we're meaning both. But yeah, and gendered languages. I'm there was a study done on the prophetic books that actually looked at this and demonstrated that when the masculine forms of the Hebrew are used, so Hebrew has male female gender in the grammar, when the masculine forms of those words were used to refer to groups, it was clear that there were women included in those groups. And so we actually have some good exegetical evidence to suggest that this is what's happening, at least in the Old Testament, and I would argue it's the same in the New. It's hard to argue that, adel Foy. In your example, Brothers, when Paul is writing to the churches, for instance, he's not singling out all the males who are involved in that church or only addressing all the males that are involved in that church. He's using that term collectively to refer to everyone in that congregation. See. I think it's a good point, but that is the kiss.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, if that is the case, the question before us, I think doesn't change. And that's what is the text doing. That is addressing men where they are, right, which I think is a different question than does the text specifically address this idea of masculinity. We've said as a general answer, no, it does not. But that does not mean the same thing as the text isn't talking to men. Of course, is talking to men and it's talking to women, And there's ways in which it's talking to us both at the same time that can be directed towards us. And I think that's really important to recognize that when we mentioned paradigms in one of the previous episode, that that's a good way to think through this. Right, that all of these sorts of declarations and storytellings and letters and so on and so forth that are going on in scripture, they belong to a people in a place, and they take the shape of the people in a place.

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Speaker 1: Right.

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Speaker 2: The languages that are used, I would argue, Hebrew and Greek, there's nothing inherently special about them. In some theological way, they reflect the languages that are present and the modes therefore within which people speak. Right. It's sort of the idea that John Calvin he says that when when God speaks to us, he speaks to us as a parent to a child. And what he meant by that was not apparently sort of pedantic kind of a way in that particular instance. What he meant was, when a parent has to explain something, you have to think, Okay, how does an eight year old understand this concept?

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Speaker 1: Right?

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Speaker 2: I can't answer this eight year old the way that I would my graduate students. It's not going to work. Or my eight year old just look at me and she quite literally will say huh. So you got to think about those sorts of things, right, And so John Calvin's point was that when God's talking to us, he's always speaking in a way that's accommodating to the fact of our position. Right, We're not God. Okay, so how does God explain this thing? Well, you know, it was like, what I'm like with you is like a hen who nestles you under her wing, right, a gendered comment, but not a gendered meaning per se.

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Speaker 1: Right.

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Speaker 2: And I think that's important to recognize here that because that's what the text is doing. The paradigm's idea for us is to say we now live in particular places in particular times and social settings, and we can't just simply say that it's an easy move to say, Okay, well, we understand in agriculturist society, for instance, we understand a situation in which cities are themselves the entirety of a stronghold, and cities have these walls like we have to begin to think paradigmatically, how does that space intersect with our space?

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Speaker 1: And that's a challenge. Yeah, I mean, I think we had this conversation last time, you know, where you had brought up the notion of the bride of Christ, you know, the church being the bride of Christ. You have this in John's letters, I believe it's third John, where it's written to the elect lady, and it's clear that it's referring to the church as a whole. Again, we don't take those references as saying, okay, what does it mean for a man to be in a feminine institution or something like that. Right, we recognize these for what they are. They are really powerful metaphors and ways of thinking through the relationship between Christ and Church that should have an impact on us, should change the paradigms within which we think. But they aren't ascribing some sort of femininity to the church as a whole, as if that were clear. So even if we were to argue that, the next logical question this is where we run up against it with masculine as well. It's like, okay, if we say, well, you know, being the bride of Christ implies of femininity. Okay, what is that femininity? It's never defined in the biblical text. You don't see it, you know, shaped anywhere. Really, even if you went back into Proverbs, which might be you know, one of the logical places to go if you're looking for feminine images, you have lady Wisdom, Lady Folly, you have the Proverbs thirty one woman. But arguably, I would say those images in those texts are really more inclined toward wisdom right and helping us understand the character of wisdom and what wisdom entails than they are describing women specifically or some sort of notion of the feminine specifically. It would be foolish to think that, for instance, when a man becomes wise, that automatically we should have to ascribe some sort of femininity to him. You've got all these sort of characters and uses of different gendered language as we've been talking about, but also these male and female symbols that are being used all over the place. And I think part of my issue as I was reading through a lot of the masculinity literature, is just we don't see people applying those in the same way as they seek to apply other areas. And so they want to They would not have a problem saying no, no, no, men could be wise, and yet how do you wrestle them with lady wisdom? Right? Why isn't this a feminine characteristic? Given that what Proverbs does with that as lady wisdom throughout the book. But we don't wrestle with those things. What we want to do is we want to pull what we want to pull out of this. And when we're saying that there isn't a biblical manhood in scripture, that's really what we're talking about, This idea of parsing these things out, distinguishing between faithful characteristics like wisdom, like obedience, like subjection to one another. These aren't masculine or feminine characteristics. They're just characteristics, and men and women may embody those differently. I think that's why you have variation. For instance, in the instructions to husbands versus wives, because there was something going on in that setting that made that difference in instruction in Ephesians five pertinent. Right, you see it there. So there are differences, but that doesn't necessarily mean that there's one way of doing it that means you're means it's masculine. One way of doing it means it's feminine. So I'll leave it there.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I think it's instructive. The way that you describe things, that's really instructive. I want to look at both of those instances, Proverbs and Efesians. Yeah, in the Ephesians setting, or sorry, let's cover with the prophets. In the Proverb setting, the narrative form really does matter, and the narrative form or framework that it's set in. As the Book of Proverbs begin begins with a father talking to his son.

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Speaker 1: That's right.

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Speaker 2: And as a father talking to his son, he now lays before him the path of are you following lady wisdom or lady folly? Here's the direction. Here's what the direction of lady wisdom leads you to. Here's what the direction of lady folly leads you to. And then the climax of the book, or perhaps the conclusion of the book, depending how you want to see it. Proverbs thirty one, you have the woman we often think of as the virtuous wife. The choice, the choices are all dictated by that narrative form. One can very easily imagine the setting of the book being a mother talking to her daughter, and the moment you have a mother talking to her daughter, it's now now here's whatever? That what's the equivalent sir, sir folly and sir wisdom? Because how you would do it right? And then the end would be the virtuous husband right? The idea is precisely so. In other words, the narrative form is setting things up as a particular conversation that you're entering into, and that what that's what dictates the other parts of it and to why they're told in the way that they are. And to over extend that creates more problems than it does solutions.

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Speaker 1: Correct if we if we do.

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Speaker 2: Over extend it, a significant question comes up. So are the proverbs not for girls? Can a father or a mother not teach their daughter? You know we both have daughters and we both have sons. Right, you have ason, I have sons. Are we only allowed to teach the proverbs to the boys, not to the girls like that, that's silliness, right, right, And when I'm talking to my girls, it's important for them to understand the form of it lest they think I don't am I chasing? Am I chasing this woman who's described in these very negatively charged terms. I know I'm not. Just of course, we understand paradigmatically, there's a parallel at play to how this applies or how we work this out when talking to our daughters. Right, yeah, well, the Ephesian situation, as you point out, we tend to read it, as we said previously, from our own social setting, which is in and of itself not wrong. Right, that's where we have to read it from, and that's where we need to get meeting. But we forget there's a gap, right, We forget that there's paradigms that need intersect or, as Godamer said, horizons that need to be fused. And we now read it as a straightforward letter in a way that's written specifically to our social setting. But what if Paul is writing from a place where there are gross abuses and how husbands are treating their wives there are gross abuses within which a husband sees himself lording over his wife. And this is far from rhetorical. We actually have a lot of historical data to say that is in fact the situation then, right, Not that I'm commending it for all of its successes, but if you do want a picture of it. The HBO show rome very good at showing this heavily masculine oriented environment and the problems that it creates, not just for women but all men who are not in upper echelons of society. Right. And if Paul's now writing in this environment saying, hey, husband's let's recalibrate, and it's especially more important for him to recalib bury for the husbands there than it is for the wives. Right, Yes, but if anything to the wives, it's sort of the corrective and the settling ephesians of you might be inclined to work off of the default of the abuses that are around you. And when I tell you submit to your husbands, I don't think that's a completely objectivized term of This is what women do. They are the submitters and husbands are not the submitters. As we've already said that passage begins with submit to one another, to everyone at a church. But if we're in that sort of abusive setting, it makes sense that the women are pushing against that. So now what Paul says is, wives submit to your husbands to set up the reality of I'm now resetting the husband's expectations in a way in which he's now thinking of himself relative to Christ. And I think for us that's what's instructive here now to think about. If we're using these horizons, what could it mean for men today. Let's really think about the image of Christ that's commended to us and how that contrasts with the sort of masculinity that's put forward to us as the tough guy, the guy who is in charge, right, yeah, Because I think we can look at Jesus and say, yeah, in a real sense, he was in charge, and yet nothing about that looks the way that we expect.

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Speaker 1: And I think it's interesting too in that Ephesians five passage. The way I think of it is once the Christian men begin to exercise their authority like Christ exercised his authority, the women are now going to have a choice. And I think what Paul is partly resisting there is We don't want someone else to become the domineering party. We don't just want to flip these two things so that all of a sudden, the man is being told no, act like Christ, and the woman says, oh good, here's my opening. I'm going to take over. He's pushing toward mutual submission, and the woman's role in that is to continue to submit to the authority of the husband as it's exercised with that image of Christ in mind. And so the goal isn't to reverse the power relations within the household. The goal is to create a situation in which mutual submission makes sense and can actually be enacted. And so we see even there this idea that mutual submission coming about, and you can when we think about it like that, which I actually think is an appropriate way to think about it, given the historical background and some of the dynamics that we read about in the Parents Children text that comes in chapter six, as well as the master bond Servant text that comes in chapter six, I think when we read it like that, now, when we fast forward into today's world, what we have is a really instructive lesson of sitting back and saying, how is it that I, as a husband exers do things for my family right, for the good of my family, and that may not always mean that I am making the final decision on things. That may not always mean that I am you know, you name it. Some of these things we've gone through in the different biblical manhood conceptions. Right. Maybe it doesn't mean that I'm bold all the time. Maybe it doesn't mean that I'm you know, constantly you know, pushing things forward and I'm like this sort of manly presence. Maybe it doesn't mean that I only stay in spaces that I'm comfortable in and I never go to the nail salon of my family, you know, like whatever these things are, right, it doesn't necessarily mean that. What it means is that I'm constantly looking to do good for my family period. And that is what it kind of ends up looking like for us to be ahead like Christ, is that we're constantly doing this for another entity, for another person. Christ didn't come just for fun to hang in the cross. He came for his people. He did this for the body of Christ. And so I think there's an underlying logic there that we don't want to miss. Right, And then as wives you have the same paradigm. Now, do I think that some of that?

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Speaker 2: Do?

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Speaker 1: I think some of this relates to Biblical manhood. I tend to sort of want to say, of course, there's always carryover in everything that we read, Right, it'd be like me saying no Proverbs thirty one doesn't have anything to say to men. That's not true, right, It has something to say to men. But I think this is specific to husbands and lives. It's it's addressing that specific relationship, and anything we draw out of that really does need to be recontextualized. It needs to be the pattern that's pulled out. So we begin to understand, Okay, if I'm a single man who's operating a business, what does this really look like for me to uh interact as Christ would interact in this setting? And how does this text inform what I'm doing over here? Doesn't inform what I'm doing over here? Of course it can, But I don't think that's a stable sort of here's the way men act, here's the way women act. Now go and do likewise? Hope that Hope that makes sense for folks.

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Speaker 2: I think so, I think what you're describing as sort of an informal negotiation right, where it's a it's a recognition within a setting. So for the first part of your comment of what can I do for the sake of my family, Well, that's a recognition of needs, it's a recognition of abilities, a recognition of what you need to work on.

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Speaker 1: Right.

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Speaker 2: It doesn't just mean well I only do things according to my strengths, but there's a recognition perhaps of you know, if you have two partners and one of them is able to do one thing better than the other, and there's an informal negotiation of well, this is your strength, you do that and I'll do this. It's sort of the mentality that's at play because it's a sense of the very fact of my presence in the environment, is my receiving as an identity marker who I am from my family.

00:23:33
Speaker 1: Right.

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Speaker 2: For instance, I'm not a father if I don't have kids. Right, there is no husband that doesn't have a wife. There is no wife that doesn't have a husband. There's no mother that right. So the the very claim on my being comes from that setting. And now it's a reciprocal sort of thing of I get who I am from it, and then I give back to it so that I'm not merely defined by who I am visa via person, but also now what I'm doing in that particular setting.

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Speaker 1: Right.

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Speaker 2: In my case, I'm certainly not the cook that you've described from some of these shows that are quite out there, and the ability these people have to just I've tasted that and I know what's in there, and I'm gonna like, that's never been precisely me. But I think I'm a decent cook, yeah, And so it's I can use that within the environment. But I also know that that means sometimes what I think of as being a decent cook is patterned to my particular tastes, right, and that doesn't necessarily match what the kids are doing. Right. So now there's that sort of in the sense that I received myself from them. Can I be attentive to it so that I say, obviously I can't please all four kids at the same time, but can I adjust recipes in a way that meets them and serves them? Right? I think that's the sort of reciprocal mutuality that you know is a is a learning process, which means it's not just what I'm good at, it's what I have to grow in right. I've been learning recently how to braid my daughter's hairs to help them in that matter, and it's it. You know, I've done it a number of times at this point. It's way better than that first time. The first time actually made my daughters laugh, you know. But that's part of the process of, right, what do I need to be in this environment? What I needed to be was to be someone who can learn to help braid my daughter's hair.

00:25:42
Speaker 1: Right.

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Speaker 2: And that goes to me if we want to talk about what is masculine, it's it's the willingness and ability to step into that space and say, what do I need to me? That's the pattern of the Jesus, who was in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but took the form of a servant, but not just the form of a servant, humbled himself all the way to the point of the cross. Right to use a Philippians two dynamic and right before that is when Paul tells us, imitate me, as imitate Christ. Right, it's this notion of what do I need to be in this environment? Yes, but there's no pre set what that is? What that is in one household is very different than another household. And by the way, that's going to be very different if we're talking about sort of a traditional Western household of two parents and two and a half kids, whatever a half kid is, versus say an Indian household where you have three generations living together and perhaps uncles and aunts and cousins in the same house. Right, that's going to change the dynamic of what does it mean to live in this space.

00:26:45
Speaker 1: Well, I think it's interesting. We talked a little bit about rhinesia or art on one of the previous episodes, and this is really where I think the constructive aspect comes in. So I was thinking about how to explain this and that you know, I grew up in the era of Michael ju and you often hear about what Michael Jordan does. You could watch Steph Curry is another example. Right, he shoots like some thousand balls before practice or something like that. Right, Like, these guys are putting in the work. And you can name any any big athlete, you could go to, any ballet dancer, you could go to any anybody who's at the top of their profession. Right, they're putting in the reps, Right, they're just doing the work. And so if you want to be at the top of that profession, if you want to be a great basketball player, yes there's some genetics involved, right, but Muggsy Bogues, who is the shortest basketball player I think ever to play, sort of buckets yeah, professionally, right, So I mean it's not all genetics. It's not like you have to be a seven footer to play basketball. You can actually get good and play, but it requires work. And so one thing one might do is you go out and you'd emulate one of these people who are at the top of their profession. See this all the time in business leaders right, you buy the oh what what are the you know, the richest people on the planet, the most successful people in the planet do before ten am, right, and there's you know, you can emulate what it is that they do. And the attempt there is to say I want what they have, and so I need to do what they do. Right. This is basically what na Gerard was arguing. He's saying that a lot of times what ends up happening is we think we want an object, right, we want the money, we want the success, we want the power, we want the position, whatever that is, but he said that that object gets subtly like displaced by a subject, the person who already has all of these things, right, So the person who has the money, the person who has the success, the person who has the position. We're emulating them, and as we emulate them, we take up their patterns of life. We pick up some you know, we look and see what kind of character traits do they have. We think about their ambitions and we say, Okay, if they had that ambition, I should have that ambition. And we're surrendering our own sort of thought process about what our lives should be and where we'd like to go and how we want to get there. And we're substituting any independent thoughts we might have with what other people have already done, because we want to go where they've already been. We want to be where they already are. This to me is sort of what we're doing when we're following Christ. We're looking at Jesus and we're saying, Okay, my ambitions should no longer be my ambitions. I should no longer determine my ambitions. I need to surrender my ambitions to the ambition of Christ. So what are some of those ambitions. Well, as you just said, you know, Philippians too, right, the equality with God was not something to be grasped. Many in your Testament commentators would say that what that really means is that he didn't see equality with God to be something that was kept for his own advantage. And so he's going to give this away and come down and humble himself for a people who are ultimately going to be part of the church. Right, He's giving himself up for the body of Christ. Right, Okay, So if that's the ambition, that sort of changes things for all of us, If this becomes our overriding sort of point of being here, that we are to glorify God, that we are to give ourselves away for to build the Body of Christ, that we are to have compassion on the lost, we are to you know, you could name a million different things that Christ did, none of which are male or female, all of which are uniquely Christ Like. That's what I think we're doing now as we go about doing that. Is there a way that as a male, you know, who has a particular education, who has a particular socioeconomic background, who has a particular position within society that I'm going to enact that differently than someone else, absolutely, right, those are going to take on very particular instantiations, right the way I what happens when I am imitating Christ is going to look different than what happens when Paul is imitating Christ. Right, we already see these distinctions between like Peter and Paul. Peter takes along a married wife, Paul doesn't. Right, But Paul's rationale for not doing so has absolutely nothing to do with a disagreement on whether you should or shouldn't be married. It's for the sake of the Gospel. Like, he's doing these things because he's operating under what I would call theologic right. He's thinking theologically about what he's doing, what rights he should or shouldn't pick up, based on whether or not he feels those will advance the Gospel, whether they will help the Body of Christ grow, whether they will cause someone to stumble. These are all decisions that he's making. If you read his epistles, it's really difficult to miss. Right. So, what he's doing is he's trying to emulate Jesus's self sacrifice and self giving as Paul the apostle, Right, and so you and I would do that. We try to emulate Christ as James, as Ashesh as whomever. These are not male female, They are individual, right, we do it as individuals, and we do it within the roles and positions that God places us in. So that's sort of the constructive way I think to think about this is we're looking at Jesus not as man, as male, I should say, certainly not as masculine, but we're looking at him as human and recognizing that he is the one that gives us right ambition. He's the one that sets right agenda. He's the one that points toward the right trajectory, and then we follow after him, imitate him, and allow that imitation to begin to shift and change the way we think about what we should do, what we can do, how we can do that. All those different areas.

00:33:16
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think you're pointing out Peter and Paul in parallel is instructive to the difference, right that, Yeah, they're both, they're both men. What that looks like for them and their settings is different precisely because of this again informal negotiation of them in their places. That's true on the marital front, where Peter's married and Paul is not. It's true. Apparently, from as best we can tell their role within the church, Peter seems to be more centrally located, whereas Paul is constantly on the move.

00:33:55
Speaker 1: Yeah.

00:33:56
Speaker 2: I don't know that we can look at either one of them as this is the model. They're both models in their own way. If we can begin to extract what is it about their behavior, what is it about their movement their lack of movement that is faithful And it's the idea of faithfulness that's a play, right, It's the ability to recognize what is needed of them. Paul recognized what it was needed of him was to push the boundary of this gospel that began among the Jews, to take it among the gentiles. What tradition tells us that someone like Thomas pushed it in another way, right, he pushed it outside the boundary. If Paul was within the Roman Empire, Thomas pushed it outside the Roman Empire. We see someone like John, who seems to be the one disciple or apostle who didn't die early from some form of martyrdom, to someone who becomes apparently an elder almost to the end of that first century AD. I don't know that we can look at any one of them more faithful than the others, right apart from an individual moment, right, we can think of the Jerusalem Council where Paul had to call out Peter. Yes, but as a general trajectory of their roles, it was them recognizing where they were. And we haven't yet gotten into the fact that the New Testament mentions local churches.

00:35:23
Speaker 1: Right.

00:35:23
Speaker 2: There's Timothy, there's Titus, who apparently are commended in particular church environments. There are men and there are women who are both commended in their church environment for their role within it, without prescribing at any given moment of therefore, this is what you do to either men or to women. Right now, Some might respond, what about first Timothy and Titus, where it seems like there's more. That's something we can get to later, But at least at the moment, what we see as a pattern is there's no singular narrative that's put forth for how to act. It's more the joining reality, the faithfulness. And that's before we even consider they just live in a different world, a different basic cadence to the world in terms of pre industrial by a lot a bit different reality to the world of a world that doesn't know Jesus at all, right, a colonial environment, but a colonial environment that had nothing to do with the message of Jesus versus a modern colonial environment that, for whatever its reasons, were predicated upon spreading.

00:36:31
Speaker 1: The word of Jesus.

00:36:32
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then we just have the basic reality of the political differences, right, where Paul has no political agency apart from being able to appeal to his citizenship. Right, for many of us we have real political agency, some more than others, but we have real political agency, right, whether it be a simple the simple reality of taking a ballot and voting to things like protests, right, that changes all sorts of things. So to look for one core idea in the midst of all this jumble, and that's just the beginning of the jumble, wouldn't even make sense, you know, we'd have if that was the purpose of the Bible. It would be a really long long text to begin to nail it every distinct dynamic, even to those things that hadn't yet begun to exist.

00:37:28
Speaker 1: Right.

00:37:29
Speaker 2: And so back to the paradigm, Right, the idea player of this faithfulness is that it's a recognition. What is it that I am able to give in this environment for the sake of my family, for the sake of Jesus, for the sake of both in conjunction. Right, as Paul pointed out, there were things he could give that someone like Peter couldn't because he chose to forego marriage. He commended to the Carinthian Church. You know, who's willing to join me in this task. It's a good task if you can do it right. All these dynamics right have have have so many qualifications that you can't just simply say a man looks like this and put a stamp upon it. What you have to do is have that wisdom dynamic of being able to discern what can I give in this environment relative to what's around me and who's around me, and what they're giving and what I received from them.

00:38:28
Speaker 1: Yeah, because I think that even what you're saying there, like when you mentioned one Timothy III and Titus, which we can get into later, you know, instruction to elders. Let's say, let's just take for a moment the assumption that this is only to men. Right, If we assume that it's still within a relational context, you're occupying a particular space in relation to the church, and you're being given very specific instructions about what that is. And so it isn't that these now are instructions for any man. It's now instructions for elders. And I think we see that over and over and over and over again, is that the more specific instructions are actually within a given relationship. And so I think it's very difficult for us to assume that just because a husband or a son, or a father and whatever is supposed to act in a very particular way in relation to a wife or a you know, a parent, or a son or a brother or whatever it is, there's a move that we have to make there, like we have to recognize the paradigm within that and say, okay, this isn't about manhood. This is about how we interact within relationships where there is a let's say, a power dynamic of sorts that happens. If you just took the fathers and sons so to passages and you said, well, what would that ever say, right, don't exasperate your children. Well maybe you shouldn't be exasperating anyone, but that you know, this text is saying, don't exasperate your children but it's not like you can go, well, this kid, this isn't my child, so I can exasperate this person all I want. Right, there may be a unique dynamic in which fathers are exasperating their children that needs to be addressed, and that that dynamic needs to change, but it doesn't necessarily mean that exasperating anyone else is okay. And so we can see the paradigm clearly there when we pull it out, But we also need to recognize it's not like it's, uh, mothers, it's okay for you to exasperate your daughters like that's that's lunacy, Like all of it needs to be sort of pulled out in that paradigm, and you say, look, this isn't just about male's females. It's not even about males are particularly susceptible to exasperating their sons. And so that's why it's written this way. Right. There may be certain cases where that comes up, but I don't I mean, as a I who's got daughters and sons, I would say that it's just as easy for me to exasperate any of my children, like you know, how to get on all their nerves. It's okay because it's not a and I would think my wife's the same way. So there's just this sort of turn that we need to make to say, Look, if Christ is who we're supposed to imitate, then what we're constantly doing is asking ourselves, how is it that I can give myself away for the other in a way that will be redemptive to them? Maybe in its most simplistic terms, that's all it really is, and that applies to male and female all at the same time. That's probably too brief, it's too much abbreviation, but that's sort of the trajectory I think the way we need to start thinking about this. And I would just point out here that if we overlay and say, well, men are really supposed to do it this way, so when we imitate here, you have to have this layer of masculinity on top of this. That's actually a really big distraction, agreed. It draws It draws attention away from what we're really supposed to be doing, which is allowing Christ to set the agendas imitate him and not worry about whether or not I feel comfortable in painting, you know, my walls mouth or going to a nail salon or you know, any of the other things we've kind of seen in a lot of this literature. None of that really makes a lot of sense once it's boiled down.

00:42:35
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think if I can pull back the analogy you used earlier, you appealed to Muggsy Bogues, five foot three, Muggsy Bogues and a land of giants. Right, professional basketball, to be six foot is to be short, right crazy? And to imagine this five to three guy who made it. Uh, the skill this guy should just inherently had to have had is an important part of the equation. But on top of that, to your point, the amount of work you to put in, I guarantee on some levels he had to work harder than say John Stockton at six'. TWO i believe he was something around, there, Right it was an all time great just to make, it just to be. There, Right there's this iconic picture of him Guarding Michael, jordan Where Michael jordan was an average height basketball, player and he's towering over, him and All michael does is he sticks the ball hype in the air and he's Hunting muggsy like you can't get. This, then the amount of work that goes into that in addition to the talent is really important to recognize because those things together set a lot of things in. Play if we were to say the only way you can be good as a as a man is to be someone who plays in THE, nba we've just lopped off a whole group of people that maybe are six feet tall but don't have the.

00:44:07
Speaker 1: Talent.

00:44:07
Speaker 2: Right we've lopped off a whole group of people that maybe are really, talented but they're five to, three right and didn't have the breaks or the hard work euthic Of Muggsy. Bogues my point here is that there's there's so many layers that go into, this and that's WHAT i take you to be, Saying, james that when we when we try to get overly specific with these are the markers of truly being a, man what we end up doing is taking for granted that there's those are just not options that are open to every person who is, male, right, Right and in, fact some of those things might actually be open options.

00:44:51
Speaker 1: To people who are.

00:44:52
Speaker 2: Female and what we've now done to, them as we've, said, well for you to exhibit that quality makes you more like a man than a. Woman Right that in that and of itself creates, this, yes this headspace that's entirely unhelpful regardless of where you are on the reality. Here and what, if just what if we were to recognize that people are different and we can encourage them within that to be the fullest of who they. ARE i just wonder if we had done that as a church for, longer might we have had men who are very different from each other who are quite happy to be able to affirm each, other and women who are very different from each other who are quite happy to affirm each other As women's sort of a fool's question that we don't live in that, world but it's not too. Late what?

00:45:49
Speaker 1: If, WELL i think you, KNOW i was always a big. Fan WHENEVER i Taught romans to, undergraduates we'd start with chapters fourteen and, fifteen and we'd end chapters fourteen and, fifteen BECAUSE i always felt fourteen and fifteen were the Where paul really got it down to brass. Tacks fourteen and fifteen is the weak strong. Argument he's urging these people To he's urging the strong to bear with the. Week he's urging the week not to judge the. Strong he's calling them to a harmonious community, together not of, judgment not of and not telling, them, hey if you see, sin just ignore it or something like, That, Right but what he's trying to get them understand is that these differences shouldn't create disunity within The body Of, christ that these differences should actually condition the way that your strength is, Exercised that these differences should actually condition the way that the weak view the, Strong like these differences are to be enacted within The body In christ in a different. Way AND i always felt like when you started there With romans and then you went back and you started, reading you, know some of the other aspects of, it it, was you, know the jew gentile sort of. Dynamics in the first part of the. Book what you're really, Seeing paul do is get to an even playing, field, right that all of us are in this, together that we've all been in this together from the, beginning that, yes there were certain advantages to Being, jewish but at the end of the, day we're all saved by grace through, faith and so what does this, mean, well and then you get back to fourteen and, fifteen what does it? Mean it means that the differences that we exhibit in community are to be met with, charity with, love with. Respect where to navigate those differences in ways that do not cause other people to, stumble because at the end of the, day their conscience is judged by The, lord not by. You and so let's just make sure that we're cultivating growth within the body Of. Christ we're actually trying to help one. Another AND i just Think romans does that. Beautifully but you really have to almost, START i found with fourteen and, fifteen otherwise you get kind of bogged down in the history of theology and all that kind of fun stuff you have to go through to get to. It but, yeah reading fourteen and fifteen first almost sets the. Framework AND i think that's sort of where we are. Here, it's you, know we're trying to get to a point where we're, saying Imitate, christ, right and allow that imitation Of christ to set your, agenda to curtail your, ambitions to change your, ambitions whatever it means to Imitate. Christ that's What i'm going to. Do and IF i have to slough off other, things that's What i'll do. Too and now this changes the way that we relate to one another, slowly but surely it. Will AND i think that's really the, point whereas if we were substitute, masculinity be A christian man on top of, this where we've shown throughout this series that that's notoriously difficult to, define, Right biblical, masculinity at the very, least is notoriously difficult to. Define Following christ isn't that, Hard it's not that hard to, understand whereas, being you, know a masculine dude. Is it's an, amorphous ambiguous. Concept and so why would we try for that when we barely understand what it is and where it's. Going when we already have a picture given to us and are told in scripture to follow this, person imitate this, person do what this person. Did we already know what we're supposed to. Do we don't need the extra. Framing and SO i would argue that it's actually detrimental to put the masculine piece Onto christianity because it's a wrong framing and it's distracting us from where we're really supposed to, go which is is Imitating, christ being self giving and doing these sort of ongoing negotiations right within community to build up the body Of. Christ even if it's to our own. Detriment so, Yes SO i think in some.

00:50:18
Speaker 2: A in order for us to really Understand jesus is instructive to every single. Person, yeah we have to peel off that sort of masculine and masculinity. Filter. Yes but in addition to, THAT i like your point about it's it's easier just to Take jesus As jesus and to Imitate, jesus BECAUSE i take it what you mean by by the easiness there. Is this isn't like asking the average person to go hang with a bunch OF nba players in a pickup game of, basketball, right something that most of us don't have the skills to.

00:51:00
Speaker 1: Do.

00:51:00
Speaker 2: Right the difficulty Of jesus is encapsulated by the, rich young, ruler, yes who had a wilfulness. Problem it's not a call upon, talent it's not a call upon having one set of strengths versus another set of. Strengths it was just a matter of are you willing to do? It?

00:51:22
Speaker 1: Yeah and.

00:51:25
Speaker 2: The difficulty with the masculinity filter is that it actually is outside the skill set of a large number of. People, right, right you just can't do. IT i, MEAN i think of a really good friend of. Mine if we think about something as simple as lifting. Weights WHO i lifted weights with him for years and you would never know it looking at. Him his frame was the tiniest frame you'll ever. See and maybe he'll listen to this and he'll Know i'm talking about. Him sorry about, That but he was in there and he was, working AND i know he was, working he was. Alongside he was never going to he was never going to Lift James spencerwaight just wasn't gonna. Happen it wasn't his. Frame but you don't want to put that kind of filter on, it, right that kind of filter that's based upon, personality that's based upon its skills, abilities and that's not at all What jesus did for. Him it was a matter of, wilfulness which is, hard but it's a different kind of.

00:52:20
Speaker 1: Hard, WELL i think it's no, mistake and we can kind of maybe close up with, this BUT i don't think it's any mistake that the rich young ruler narrative in scripture is juxtaposed with the children coming To. Jesus, right they're coming as completely, vulnerable completely, dependent without. Anything they're just, kids they have, nothing and these are the type of, people the, vulnerable the, dependent the people who are willing to come with no inconmferences To. Jesus these are the people who are the kingdom Of. God the folks like the rich young, ruler who are dependent on their wealth to a large, degree and they've cultivated a dependence on their, wealth they are going to have a much harder time entering The kingdom Of god because they are refusing to let go of what they need to let go of in order to really truly give themselves fully To. Christ AND i think that's the point of those two narratives In chuck's. Position and, so, yeah that is WHAT i mean by. Easier it's you, know IF i had to live up to the standards Of olympic, Weightlifters i'm. Done and so these arbitrary lines that were drawing for other men are, unnecessary, unhealthy and. Unhelpful AND i think they're going to lead us down a path of wrecking The church as opposed to building The body Of. Christ we know how to do, this like scriptures very clear on. It Imitrate christ to follow, him be self, giving love one, another Love. God like we know all of this. Stuff that's very clear, Masculinity biblical, Masculinity biblical manhood completely, unclear confusing most of the, time full of bravado and bull, crap like it's just a completely unnecessary. Paradigm AND i just think that what we're putting back in place if we take away biblical manhood and we put this back in, place where we're putting back in place is, discipleship learning to live under the authority For christ and allowing him and his the paradigm that he said guide the course of our. Lives you want to take a second to thank the team At Life Audio christian. Podcast this Is if you go to life audio dot, com you'll find dozens of other faith centered podcasts hung in there with. Us they've got shows About bible parenting everybody. Else we're going to continue this year is we're going to actually start doing a little bit More Exe jesus of certain passages and looking at specific passages here now that we've kind of gone through the the the visionary portion of its bost of this, series so stick with us and come back on the next. Episode take care of. Everybody m