Discipled Men: Rethinking Masculinity Through the Lens of Christ

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 Dr. 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. Before we start today's episode, I want to take a moment to tell you about UsefulToGod.com. From online courses to free downloadable study guides, I'm confident you'll find something to help you live faithfully in today's world. You can also check out some of my books, including Christian Resistance, Serpents and Doves, and my most recent contribution, The D.L. Moody Essentials Collection. Coming this fall, we're also running a German Reformation Tour. The tour runs from October 30th through November 9th, and we'll be visiting sites from Berlin to Munich. The booking deadline for the tour is May 31st, and spots are filling up fast. If you're interested in learning more about the Reformation, World War II, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, you can check out the tour at the link in today's show notes. As always, if you find this podcast valuable, take a second to like, share, and leave a positive review. It really does make a difference. And if you haven't yet, subscribe to our YouTube channel for even more content to equip and encourage you. Now, let's get into today's episode. Hey everyone, welcome to this episode of Thinking Christian. I'm Dr. James Spencer, and I'm joined by Nate Yertano, and we are going to be talking today a little bit about discipleship, and we're going to try to relate this specifically to why discipleship is not only important for the whole church, but is also specifically important to men. And this is going to relate to a conversation that Nate and I are going to have over several podcast episodes about biblical manhood or what it means to be a male follower of Christ. So, Nate, how's it going, man? Good, man. Good to see you. Always a pleasure to be on with you. Yeah, absolutely. Well, dude, when we think about discipleship, I mean, where do you start? You know, how can we underscore the importance of discipleship? Yeah, I think discipleship is a key part that some people kind of skirt past and maybe don't fully flush out. You know, and we've talked a great deal the last couple of years about churches not really knowing where to start. Or, you know, I think it's hard because in a congregation or in a community of people that are believers that come together in a church, like everyone's at different levels. You know, they might have been to church when they were a child and then kind of went away for a while and then come back, or they might have been the whole time, but they maybe never had a really deep walk with Christ. So I think you have to take it at a person-by-person case. It's definitely an odd challenge. I mean, you know, when we look at, first, I guess we should just say kind of what we think discipleship is. But in my mind, discipleship is very much defined by the Great Commission, right? Go and make disciples of all nations. And if it's not defined there, it's at very least, it gives us a working description that we can kind of understand. And so in that passage, what we see is that Christ has been given all authority in heaven and on earth. Therefore, we are to go and make disciples, or the disciples were told to go and make disciples. And so what we have is Christ's authority being the foundation for making disciples. And so I would say that discipleship is about learning to live under the authority of Christ. And that discipleship then, making disciples, involves at least two movements. And again, I don't think the Great Commission is exhaustive on discipleship, but when we think about it, it's baptism in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit, and it's also teaching the new disciples to observe all Christ commanded. And so we have these two things, baptism and teaching. Baptism probably referring to the commitment that we make when we initially create a union between ourselves and Christ. And so it's not that baptism saves, not saying that, but generally baptism is this sign that we have been buried with Christ. We see this in Romans 6.4, if we're buried with him in our baptism. That's the way Paul phrases it. And so we also know that we'll be raised with him in new life, so that we might walk with him in a newness of life. And so that baptismal formula there in the Great Commission is actually quite limiting if we notice that it's in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit, not in any other name. So our baptism is in this name, we're being baptized into the triune God. And then the teaching is similarly limiting, we're to obey or observe all that Christ commanded. And so the Great Commission as a way of describing discipleship, I think is really effective. It's fairly simple. You have these three elements, living under Christ's authority, that involves baptism or joining of ourselves in Christ and his burial and his death. And I think that that refers to this split that we're planning to make from the flesh, right? From our worldly sort of passions and interests and the present forms of this world that are passing away. And there's a lot of biblical language we could pile up there. And then also learning to walk, learning to follow Christ. Yep. So that's how I tend to think about discipleship. That's my kind of working description of it. No, that's great, man. I think that's so good. And in a lot of ways, like when I first got saved, even though my dad was a pastor and I grew up in a Christian home, I felt like a baby Christian for sure the first year because I really had people for the first time pouring into me, like mentoring me, discipling me. And I think sometimes, too, those two get misconstrued or kind of jumbled together. The world thinks mentorship and then we think of discipleship. You know, it's not necessarily a person or even a group of people or a church or a pastor or what. It has to always come back, like we always say, to the center of being Christ the focus, like you just said. So I think you explained it perfectly. Yeah, I think there's a sense in which we might get, there's definitely that confusion of terms. And what I would just say is whatever distinctions we want to make between discipleship or mentorship or, you know, just bringing someone along and, you know, maybe there's a Barnabas and maybe there's a Timothy and maybe there's a Paul, you know, like you hear all these kind of things that go on. I think at the end of the day, we're all just trying to do one very particular thing, and that's learn to live under Christ's authority. That's what we're always trying to do. We're trying to learn to live under Christ's authority in any given situation that we find ourselves in. And those situations are varied and complex and difficult. And I think this is why in many of the epistles, Paul and Peter and James and John, they're giving fairly complex and very situation specific instructions to the churches that they're trying to, quote unquote, mentor or disciple. Right. And they're trying to help them understand this is what faithful living looks like. This is what it looks like for us to live under the authority of Christ within the situation that we're in. Right. Sometimes I would like to like get the behind the scenes, like of what happened, you know, that the scripture doesn't say, because I'm sure they had a hard time like coming into the fold, like as the disciples learning. And the next thing they know, they're going out and then making disciples as well. But I'm sure they're human, all of them. Every one of them is human just like us. So, you know, they probably had issues or different things, different seasons, sometimes didn't feel like, you know, doing what they had to do that day. So I I think it would be awesome to be a fly on the wall or a tent, whatever you want to say, back then to see them wrestle with that, because I'm glad we have that, though, because, you know, they're human, too. And they're experiencing it just like we do when we first start as baby Christians. Well, and it's interesting, you know, sometimes I think we we may have the misperception that the disciples had been so steeped in Judaism and they were certainly they certainly understand Judaism in the Old Testament really, really well. But I think sometimes we think that they've been so steeped in that that these new situations, these new contexts were almost intuitive to them, how they would deal with it. But I would argue that's not really the case. And I would say, you know, we shouldn't dismiss the role of the Holy Spirit in all of this. You know, we see something just as simple as God's intervention in the life of Peter in the book of Acts where he's, you know, showing Peter these unclean animals. And, you know, Peter's hesitant to eat them. He sees this, you know, it's a dream. It's in a vision and he's hesitant to eat them. And God says, no, I've made all things clean. These are clean. Go kill and eat. And then he ultimately Peter is the one who brings the Gentiles in to the church and witnesses the work of the Holy Spirit within the Gentile Christians. I don't know that the early church would have really understood how to do that without God's intervention. And so it took a lot of spiritual discern

Again, it just, it helps, I think, you know, with our human condition. I think that is why maybe all these years later, discipleship is still thriving in some areas and struggling, starting and stopping in others. And I think it's always going to be a challenge because you've got that human element there. Well, it's interesting because, you know, when we, again, when we look at the early church, and it isn't like, hey, we should all go back to the early church because it was so great, right? The early church was a mess. I mean, if you read 1 Corinthians, you're seeing the mess sort of play itself out, right? They've got divisions and factions and weird sexual practices and, you know, fights over food laws. They're dealing with rich and poor. They have all the like a range of issues they're wrestling with. So the early church, I don't think, is pristine. But one of the things that I think they didn't have that we tend to have is programs. And so for them, I don't think discipleship would have been a program. Their church and life, their every day, see, and this is just my impression of it, felt a little more integrated than maybe ours did. Part of that, I think, is because the Roman culture, there was a lot of merger between religion and society at that time, where we really don't have quite as much of that. You know, as opposed to seeing, you know, the coexist bumper stickers with all the different religious symbols on the back of somebody's car, you can go a whole day without really having an explicit religious experience in, you know, sort of your public square of whatever town you happen to live in. They're just not there. But I don't get the impression that Rome was like that. And so, you know, you had a lot more of this religious integration within society. And so it would have been in the ether and I think kept the, you know, the Christians a little more on their toes about thinking, how is it that I'm living faithfully for Christ in this moment, given that my option is to worship this Roman god or give tribute to this Roman god or what have you. See this again in 1 Corinthians where Paul is talking about food sacrificed to idols. This is not something that we generally sit down and think about. Wow, what am I supposed to do with this food sacrificed to idols? It's just not what we deal with. And so I think they would have had a more, you know, in some ways, a more integrated experience of their faith, whereas we tend to have church on Sundays, Sunday school, small groups, those kind of things. And I don't know that that's the right way we should think about it. Obviously, we should be worshiping, pointing to and glorifying God every day, but that is very difficult then to disciple. It's very hard to do. And we tend to like to, we say, okay, let's pull it into a program and let's help people understand this. There's an aspect of that that I understand from a teaching perspective, but then there's another side of it that I think is detrimental, probably, as we move forward. There still has to be that sort of informal friendship and community that happens to make sure that accountability is occurring, for instance. You know, accountability is the action of a friend is very different than organizational accountability that we think of, you know, within a working setting, let's say. Totally. Yeah, and I can't help but think about, you know, the stark difference in our childhood. You know, I grew up in the early 90s and I don't know when you got a cell phone, but I didn't get a cell phone until I was 23, you know. And my kids got them when they were like 10 and 9 and it's like the difference in this next generation and our generation is vast. But then if you look at us compared to our parents, it's probably just as much, you know, because the internet and just, you know, news and media outlets and different things, TV, how much it's gotten more advanced, but it makes it even harder nowadays. But then if you look back at it, like you were saying, like there still was complications and challenges back then as well. It's just we get stuck sometimes thinking, well, it's a lot harder to reach this younger generation now because of this, this, this and TikTok, Instagram, all those things. But yeah, I think it's interesting because, again, it's just the human element that no matter what it is, and it makes me wonder 25 years from now, whatever what it'll be like and what it'll be like. I think we do need to figure it out as Christians, like it needs to be more of a focus and an emphasis. So I'm glad we're talking about it for sure. Let me ask you a serious question. If something triggered a major market drop in the coming months, would your retirement be ready or exposed? With inflation, market volatility and ongoing global uncertainty, more families are taking a closer look at whether their retirement plan is truly built to hold up. And many are finding that adding a layer of protection makes a lot of sense. Sanctuary Metals is a Christian-owned company that helps families strengthen their retirement savings with physical gold and silver through a gold IRA. During uncertain times, many people look to precious metals as a way to add stability when other assets may be under pressure. If you'd like to explore whether a gold IRA is a good fit for your situation, Sanctuary Metals makes it easy to get started. Text guide to 94878 to receive your free retirement defense guide or call 888-958-6579 to speak with one of their knowledgeable team members. Again, text guide to 94878 or call 888-958-6579. Well, we, you know, I have this interesting experience. I grew up Missouri Synod Lutheran. And so I went through what they call confirmation, right? You'd be confirmed as a member of the church and then you can take the Lord's Supper and those kind of things. We went to a Lutheran church, Missouri Synod here recently. My new daughter, my adopted daughter, she goes to a Lutheran preschool and they were singing at the church. And so we went to the service. And during the service, they said the Nicene Creed. And so I don't know. I mean, I can almost remember it verbatim, right? I can walk through it. Yeah, Nicene Creed. We used to alternate the Missouri Synod Lutheran Church. You'd go Nicene Creed, Apostles Creed. And there's a liturgy to the service where you sort of like even now, I haven't been to a Lutheran church regularly in forever, but I can still remember the Apostles Creed. I can still remember the Nicene Creed because I said it, you know, every Sunday, basically, for my entire childhood. And so, you know, so you just get it in your head. What I find interesting about those creeds is they really do crystallize what it means to be Christian. Like these are our core beliefs, our core convictions. And we get, we do doctrinal statements nowadays and that kind of stuff. But there's almost a sense in which if you said, if you can't agree with what's in the Nicene Creed, I'm not exactly sure what you mean when you say you're a Christian. Right. It's that well shaped. Okay. I think, you know, as a coordinating mechanism, these creeds are really crucial because they do give us a synthesis of every core conviction we should have as Christians from a theological perspective. But I also think that what we miss in the creeds or what the creeds can't do, they're not built for it, they can't tease out the implications of those beliefs for us in our everyday lives. Right. And that's where I think discipleship really does come in. And so part of me, you know, as I was sitting in that Lutheran church, I was like, wow, I'm, you know, the Lutherans really have something going on. And at the same time, you know, I always think back on my life and realize I didn't get saved in a Lutheran church. I was saved in college through Campus Crusade. And so while they definitely have something going on, you know, there was some sort of a miss for me or for them or the both of us about, you know, the gospel being proclaimed and really being, you know, presented with Christ in a way that I could understand it and that I could place my faith in that. And take it throughout normal daily life. Yeah. Yeah. So discipleship in my mind, we shouldn't confuse it with what I would say learning about, right? Learning about things, learning about theology, learning about God, learning about the Bible. I think that's absolutely crucial and necessary. It's part of what we have to do. But discipleship is about learning to, you know, even if we look at the language there in the Great Commission, it's teaching them to observe all Christ commanded. And so discipleship, it really is about this lived life that we learn to live as we go along as Christians. And so I think we need a both and approach to this. But we need to get back to something where we're all coordinating together as one body of Christ, as opposed to, you know, thinking about it in terms of, you know, I'm in this camp, you're in that camp. You know, I listen to this person on the radio or I listen to that person on the radio. And we start to get in this sort of first Corinthian. I follow Paul. I follow Apollos sort of syndrome. And while I don't think that's bad when we're listening to preachers that we just have a preference for or what have you, I think it does become more problematic. And this is where we need to kind of

In terms of the Corinthians were really the ones who were developing these fetishes for the various people and the various speakers. And so it isn't necessarily that he's trying to defame Apollos or Peter. He puts himself in that list. And so he's trying to get them to understand that they're all united in Christ. They're not divided by the teacher that they happen to like the best. Um, But I do think nowadays, um, we are seeing probably a mix of both. And I think I would say that particularly when it comes to some of the things I've been studying on masculinity. Gotcha. No, that's, that's good. I, I'd like to, I'd like to hear your thoughts on that, like uh specifically with masculinity because there's been, we've talked a little bit about that too, the conversation of if a woman should be in the pulpit or if a woman should be in leadership, even just a couple episodes, we were kind of talking about that. And I think everyone has different opinions on all these different things. Some churches think that you can have, I forget which uh denomination or religion it is that you know, you're not supposed to have uh instruments. It's just singing. Is that uh meth? I can't even think now which one that is, but. I don't recall either. Sorry, what? No, I don't recall either. Go ahead. Yeah, I just, I just think it's interesting that there's so many different uh things out there and you know, you, you talked about Lutheran, but my family is all Roman Catholic on my dad's side on the east coast. So growing up as a, as a young boy when I would go to weddings and different things, I was like, man, what is this? This is so different than my church, you know? And so I was very confused with religion, but also I feel like a lot of my cousins because of that, they just go through like those creeds you kind of mentioned, and I just want to throw this out there when we're talking about discipleship. When you go through and just check the boxes and yep, I'm good. I went on Saturday or I went on Sunday, maybe checked in on Wednesday, did confession, whatever. You just check the boxes, but a lot of times what's missing is the relationship. And then when a storm hits your life or something that you're not expecting comes at your way, like what do you do? You're kind of just by yourself because you can't, you know, the boxes all of a sudden aren't going to help and you're not in that environment anymore. So I think that's why discipleship is so crucial too, but especially for men, because we're called to lead, we're called to lead our families, we're called to lead our children, you know, uh our children as a father, as a husband and all these things. Even if you're not married or don't have kids, um, you know, you're always preparing for that. So I'm anxious to hear what your thoughts are on that. Yeah, I'd say two things. Number one, I see, and we've had some guests on who um referenced their pastor and some of the things they were teaching that I would say is a little bit less about biblical, being a male who has learned to live under Christ's authority. And this is the distinction I'd like to make. It's a mouthful, but I would argue that what we're really trying to do, you and I, uh, and every male out there is to be a male that is living under Christ's authority. That's the goal. Yep. And pointing people to him. And pointing people to him. I'm to the point where I'm ready to say, I don't think there is a biblical masculinity. I don't think that there is a single way or a set of characteristics that are intended to be intrinsic to a man that are so exclusive from women, right? That they're distinctly masculine. And so that, what does that leave us with? Right? It doesn't mean that there's no distinction between male and female. Right? That's a sex distinction, right? We see that in Genesis 1 27 that God created all humankind in his image, and he created them male and female. So I'm not trying to collapse that, right? That's not what I'm saying. Male and female are distinct. But then you have developing these things that I would call, um, I, I hesitate to use the phrase gender ideology. So what I'll say is gender role orientations, right? These perceptions of what a man should be and perceptions of what a woman should be. Those have certain connections with biblical teachings. Right? They may resonate with one aspect of biblical teaching. I would say, um, you know, for instance, the teachings on being a husband and father tend to be touch points for what's often described as masculinity. Right? But much of it is culturally formed and situated. So masculinity is about, you know, being rougher and, and, uh, you know, being bigger and uh being, you know, the protector, um, having the deeper voice, all of those different things. And while many men have that, right? Many men are those things. When you look at the literature, the scientific literature, those are not intrinsic characteristics, right? If we were going to nail it down and say, what is a man? You're looking more at the reproductive aspects of a man and how a man's body is designed to do what it does in the act of reproduction. You're not actually looking at, you could say, well, on average, men are taller than women, but that doesn't mean that every man is taller than a woman. Right? You could say on average, men are stronger than women, but that doesn't mean that every man is stronger than every woman. Right? And so when we start to think about masculinity in terms of these broad traits, what I'm concerned that we're doing is we're creating tiers amongst men where men are now pressured to catch up to that top tier, and if they can't, they're feeling like a second class man. And I'll give an illustration. Um, this is in Mark Driscoll's book. He talks about the feminization of the church and how it happened. And this is not historically accurate as far as I can tell in any way, shape or form. I'm not even sure he means it to be historically accurate. It's that far off. Um, so I think he may just be creating a story to illustrate something. I'm not exactly sure what, but he talks about um the strong men going off to war during World War II and leaving the women and children behind to be pastored by kindly grandpas and to be led in worship by the least masculine men. The implication being that if you can't, if you're not suitable to go to war, you're less manly. And so this least masculine man is up on stage. And when the strong men come back, they can't relate to the old grandpa and they can't relate to the um relatively feminine worship leader and even makes a reference to, you know, I couldn't, uh, I couldn't sing like this guy unless I was damaged in my nether regions. Right? Um, and so you just think about Unfortunately, that's something he would say. Right, but you just think about the implications of that. Right? So what you're telling me is that an older gentleman who steps in to pastor a church while other men go to war is less masculine than the men who go to war. The man who's exercising his gift that God has given him up on stage to lead worship is less masculine simply because he can sing in falsetto. Mm-hmm. And the strong men are supposed to be strong when they come back from war, decide that they can't deal with either one of these two things, and then just end up leaving the church. So they disassociate with church altogether, yeah. The picture, and I don't, like I said, I don't think any of that's historically accurate, so I'm not even, I'm not commenting on what actually happened. It's just what he said happened. The picture is totally off. Right. The strong men quickly become these petulant children who don't like the paint colors of the church, don't like the worship leader, don't like the pastor, think that it's become feminized, and just disassociate. And it's like, well, how are those people strong men then? How are these pictures of, how is this a picture of masculinity that we should aspire to? Yeah. Totally. No, that's a really good point, man. Yeah, so I, I just think, you know, that's what we're dealing with in some of these instances. We're dealing with this idealized picture of masculinity that is serving as a poor substitute for conforming to the image of Christ. Mm-hmm. Now, does that mean that there's no way, there's no difference between a male acting as a male under the authority of Christ and a female acting as a female under the authority of Christ? I don't think that's the case either. I think this is why we have different instructions to males and females in scripture throughout, you know, the various books. Because I think men in any given society have different opportunities to live outside the authority of Christ than women have to live outside the authority of Christ. Right. You know, so it just to me.

There's a sense in which we have been thinking about this issue in a wrong way. We've been making way too many cultural assumptions. And what we need to do is sort of take it back, unwind all of those from our perception of what this is, and restart recognizing that whatever it means to be a man that lives under the authority of Jesus Christ has to emerge from discipleship. It has nothing to do with how much you bench, how much you deadlift, how many tattoos you have, how many people you could beat up, right? Esau was not more masculine than Jacob because Jacob runs away from him, right? Like, that's a cultural assumption. It's not actually, I mean, the biblical text never says it. Right, and God didn't heal or answer prayers based on if somebody, you know, could do something physical or not. Otherwise, like Lazarus, the man that was lowered in from the roof, like that was paralyzed, like all these things wouldn't have happened. Like, but we turn it into that. And then I would say even more than Mark Driscoll, like growing up, we've kind of been indoctrinated to view priests, clergy, people in ministry as like softer, lesser versions of masculine men. When was the last time you saw, I like, I love to watch Westerns. I'm a big movie buff, little shows and whatnot. I've always grown up watching Westerns with my dad and my father-in-law, so I still do that. But when was the last time you seen a priest in a gunfight, like be one of the tough guys? They're always like, don't even know how to hold a gun or they're like hiding behind with the women. And that's how it's been portrayed pretty much our whole life in all of film and books and all those kinds of things. So Mark Driscoll and people like that that kind of take that angle are definitely part of it. But I think there's a deeper rooted part of our culture that kind of subconsciously has us thinking that way. Yeah, I agree. I mean, I think there's a sense in which, you know, assuming that because the pastor or the priest isn't holding the gun or beating up the bad guys, that he is less manly. Right. And that's the assumption I would just challenge. Right. I mean, are we really prepared to say that that someone who turns the other cheek is less manly than someone who doesn't? And how do we square that with Jesus's teaching in Matthew 5? Exactly. Yeah. Nobody thinks about it like that, but that actually, I think, makes you stronger to be able to withhold that pressure to want to like rage and like, you know, retaliate to counteract like to something like I think that is a form of strength. That is a form of masculinity to be able to do what Jesus actually called us to do. If you look at Hacksaw Ridge, I just want to say that too. Like that's one of my favorite movies in the last decade. Have you seen that one? No. So he's a, I forget how the term, but he is a seven day Adventist and so he can't touch a gun. But if you watch that movie, if any of our listeners, any of the people listening to this have seen it, they know what I'm talking about. He ends up being like the bravest and like most masculine dude in the whole movie. But everyone's hating on him the beginning of it because he can't touch a gun. He just wanted to be a medic. But the whole point of the movie is just showing his bravery and how he's willing to go out. And he's just like, God, give me some strength to get one more. They're on this hill and he climbs up basically and he ends up pulling like 50 or 60 of them out of when the raid happens. And it's like he did more than any of them ever could have done, but he didn't have any violence. He never even touched the gun the whole time. I mean, it's based on a true story. You should watch that one if you haven't. I mean, it's kind of great. You might even be able to do some writing from it because it's, I think, a lot of what we're talking about here. I'll have to check it out. Yeah, I think overall, so we have that, you know, we have this sort of, if we look at the cultural perception of masculinity, it's presented in movies. That's that I think is presented as sort of a caricature from certain pastors and in various writings on biblical manhood. It starts to feel like me, like more machismo, right, where we're we're sort of aping this stereotypical version of a dude, right? And, you know, we just become bros. We're not, we're not really men living under Christ's authority. We're just sort of, Oh yeah, let's, let's, you know, I mean, I hate hunting and fishing, Nate. Like I hate it. I mean, a lot of the things that, that he references again, I was reading through Mark Driscoll's book. A lot of things that he references is sort of, you know, gesturing toward masculinity. I hate, I just don't enjoy doing them. And so there's a sense in which I think that there's a, you know, part of the reason that people have always challenged me to look into this issue, and that's the why that's kind of the reason I'm doing it, is because I think early in my career, I embodied a lot of this. You know, I was the, I was the bully leader, you know, I did a lot of that sort of, you know, chest puffed out posturing. And as I've gotten older and even as I got, you know, older in my position, as I was leading an organization, I realized that's not the right way to do things. It's not the only way to do things, certainly not the right way to do things. And that it wasn't, it didn't reflect a lack of confidence if I did it a different way, but it took time for me to understand that. And I think part of that is just, it's unwinding all of these cultural assumptions. Let me ask you a serious question. If something triggered a major market drop in the coming months, would your retirement be ready or exposed? 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And also giving room for God through using the Holy Spirit to soften parts of our heart that have been hardened maybe from experiences, childhood trauma, different things that maybe we've walked through or just part of the culture, like you're saying. I think if you're not open to discipleship, like how are you going to be open to letting God heal parts of your heart that are maybe pushed off to being open to something or growing in your faith because you've got a hardened heart towards something. Well, and I would just say this, just to underscore the point. I do think what it means to be a man has to emerge from discipleship. You know, we are, yes, God created us male and female, right? We're sexed beings, right? And I believe, you know, sex is binary, male or female. And so as males and females, we are trying to, through discipleship, learn to live under the authority of Christ. I do think that's going to look different, not only for the large groupings, male and female, but also for the individuals within those large groupings. Your discipleship is going to look not totally different than mine, right? Because we're all part of the same body. And so, you know, there's a coordinating aspect to discipleship, which kind of hinted at earlier with the creeds, but there is a coordinating aspect of discipleship that we're all aiming toward the same thing. And we're all aiming to point to and glorify the Lord Jesus Christ. We're all aiming to point to and glorify the triune God. And so there is this coordinating aspect to it. There's a commonality across. That's why I think Paul can say, you know, not only should men be self-controlled, but women should be self-controlled. You know, nobody should be a drunkard. It's not like men can't do it, but women could. You know, all these different things. There's a commonality across. But at the same time, your discipleship is going to look different than my discipleship. Even if it moves toward the same place, it's going to occur in a different cadence. It's going to occur in a different order. It's going to be, you know, shaped and pushed in different ways. I'm going to embody Christ in different contexts than you do, right? And I think that's something important for us to remember. Absolutely. And I do think, just the last thing I would say is, I do think that a lot of this masculine, what is a man, you know, sort of what is masculinity, what is femininity, I think what it ends up leading to is a propensity to diminish people who don't live up to that standard as opposed to really looking at

Me, I'm mentored by a couple guys in my church that are, one's in his 80s and one's like in his 50s. And they've got more life experience, but I wouldn't want to be mentored or discipled by somebody that I don't hear love in their language. I don't feel like closer to God after spending time with them. You got to judge people, you know, we're not supposed to judge people, but you can judge people by their fruit. And one of the most first fruits that you can see in somebody and hear in their language is the love of Christ. And I think, you know, that you're talking Corinthians earlier, if you have not love. I've been reading Corinthians like every day for the past couple of months just to really instill that in my mind. And you can do all these things, you know, you can save the whole world and lose your soul if you have not love. Like love needs to be at the base of it because that's what God is. God is love. So when I hear that language, I always run it through that filter. Like that doesn't sound like it's from God. And maybe we can touch on some of these points like you're saying, but it doesn't need to be our main focus. Yeah. I think ultimately where this all goes, where I'm seeing most of it go awry as I'm doing more and more research on this is, at this point, let's say we make a simple statement like men are made for dominion. Genesis 1, 26 and 27, humankind is given dominion over all the creatures of the world, right? And so men are made for dominion. Was that true? It is, but in what sense? And is it only men? Because as I recall in that passage, it's male and female are given that. So it's really a co-dominion. And so where does the idea that man is woman's protector come in? Not sure. Yeah, because if Adam and Eve, neither one of them really were one or the other at first, and if that was the case, he would have just stopped at Adam. He wouldn't have taken the rib and made Eve. It's a very, yeah, it's a, it's these subtle shifts. It's a subtle reading into those texts, right? And then reading out of them what is suspiciously a cultural understanding of masculinity and femininity. And so I think that that's where a lot of the problems are occurring here, Nate. And what we need to get back to, I think, if I look at a text is when Samuel goes to, Saul has been rejected. Samuel goes to Jesse's house and he's going to anoint a new king over Israel. And he sees Eliab. This is David's older brother. He's like, surely this is the, surely the king is before me. This is the guy. And God says, no, not the guy. Pay no attention to his outward appearance. For God does not look at the outward appearance. I am judging these people by their heart, by their character. And I think that sometimes what we do when we sort of paint these pictures of masculinity, we often say, well, a man's going to be this, this, this, this, and this. You know, he's going to have big muscles. He's going to be able to protect. He's going to have your rough and tumble. He's going to work with his hands. He's going to, you know, whatever. And then we say, but also you should really love the Lord. And I think we need to just massively invert that. That all these other things, I think they're, I mean, you know, I grew up in a rural town. I knew bunches of guys who worked on cars and did, you know, more physical kind of things. I just never got into it. I wasn't very good at it. I was more of, I, I took art classes all through high school. I drew a pen and ink and did sketches and pencil. You know, I helped paint the musical sets. Like I was that guy. Yeah. And, and so I look back on that and I'm like, I don't feel less manly because I did those things. Sure. But some people would look at it and, you know, think that, right. I didn't play sports. I didn't, you know, I was on the football team. All those kind of, you know, sort of macho things that you think about. And sometimes when I, when I hear people talking about biblical masculinity, I'm taken back to my high school days, right? Where the small skinny boys were less manly than the big, you know, jocks on the football team. Right. Now I was always fairly big. And so it wasn't like, you know, I was sort of somewhere in the middle there, but I just find the whole thing kind of crazy. Yeah. Well, otherwise David would have been close to the size of Goliath if that was how it was supposed to work. I think God chose David for a reason. Yeah. For sure. Like, I mean, and there's so many examples of that in the Bible. Yeah. You mentioned it with Samuel as well. Yeah, definitely. Paul himself. I mean, there's, there's some great work being, that was done on marks, scars on the body of Greco-Roman people. And so if you had scars on your front, right, visible scars on your face and your chest, this was a sign of courage. It meant that you've been in battle and you faced your opponent. Right. If you had scars on your back, no bueno. Right. Because you were running away. You're a coward. The opposite. And it was the same thing with lashing. Like if you caught lashes, it was a sign, you know, that you are more like a slave than you were a human. And so when Paul talks about the marks that he has on his body, he's probably referring to the lashes that he's gotten for following Christ. In Galatians, when he references these marks that he has on his body, these would have been shameful marks in Greco-Roman culture. Right. But Paul's looking at him and he's saying, no, no, these, these are the marks of a follower of Jesus. I'm proud of these. Hmm. And there's always this little twist that he does, right? So Paul isn't, I don't picture Paul as like somebody of big stature and manliness and, you know, rough and tumble Paul. You know, he was probably not a particularly impressive physical specimen. And then, you know, he has these marks now from being a bond servant, you know, he, you get the picture of Paul that he is a little sickly, a little beaten down by life. And yet his power doesn't come from his physical appearance. He's not defined by those cultural stereotypes. He is the apostle Paul, not because he in himself is anything, but because God called him. And God in him, yeah. Yeah. And so it's, it's just a very, I think that's where I kind of like to sort of end the conversation and just say, whether you're male or female, I mean, we framed this in terms of male an awful lot, but I would say the same thing for females. I don't think there is a biblical femininity. I think there are women, every Christian woman is seeking to live under the authority of Christ. Right. Absolutely. Individually and as a group. And I think that there's going to be, there are different expressions of that, right? Because of the various challenges we face, whether they are physical, you know, um, I tell a story about trying to squeeze through a crevice in Utah with my family. I mean, man, you know, carrying groceries in, it's nice to have size, right? Squeezing through crevices in Utah. Dude, it was, yeah, like my kids were much better fitted for that environment than I was. And so, you know, you have this sort of different embodiment physically, but we also have that culturally. And these cultural environments that we create by talking about different forms of masculinity or femininity create pressures, pinch points for people where they're going to have trouble squeezing through the crevice. Right. And I think that's a really unfortunate thing that we're doing to pressure people toward that when we could just as easily say, look, we're going to push aside all of this masculine nonsense. My concern is only that you fear the Lord because that's the beginning of wisdom. My concern is only that you devote all you are and have to the Lord, that you're following him with everything you are and have. Absolutely. And your surroundings are the people that are going to push you in that direction. So maybe in closing, we can kind of say anyone that resonates with this, that maybe wants to unpack some of those things and they don't currently have anyone in their life that like is helping them in this journey. Like we can certainly put some of our resources from useful to God in the show notes here. We have some discipleship resources that we can put in there. But what's a couple of things that you would tell anyone listening right now if like this hit them and they're like, whoa, I don't really know besides going to church on Sunday if I have anyone that's really discipling me. What's a couple practical things you would give them to try to do? Number one. Yeah. Number one, I would say if you're a man, but you're not a father and a husband, just know that you can still learn an awful lot about what it means to be a man from Scripture. I think most of the teaching nowadays skews toward father husband, and that's unfortunate. So I would definitely say that we don't want to leave the single men out of this. Right. Number two, I would say what we're always

And so what I would say is, when we think about living under the authority of Christ, we're also trying to respond to God's presence among us. And if we're going to respond, if you think about it, Nate, like, you know, let's say I'm not looking at a camera right now, and somebody's walking up behind me and they're going to, you know, hit me with something, and I don't see them coming, I can't respond to them. Right. All of these activities, reading scripture, prayer, getting together with guys, having accountability groups, having guys challenge our perceptions of things, being authentic, all of those kind of activities that we engage in, they're not to make our lives better. They are to help us respond to God's presence among us. That's good. They help push our blind spots out of the way. And so I would definitely say that. There's a reason to participate in those things. There's a reason to do them. There's probably multiple reasons to do them, but I would say, if we're not doing those things, it's going to be very difficult for us to identify where God is present and active in our lives. And that's core to responding to Christ and living under his authority. Absolutely. No, that's really good. So those couple things I would say, and you know, then just end of the day, don't beat yourself up. This is always a process. It takes time. Yeah, for sure. It takes time to learn to live with God. Yep. 100%. And when you become a new creation, it doesn't mean like a switch happens and you're like, oh, I'm better now. I'm good. I keep this problem. Sadly, no. It's gonna be tough. I'm 45 and I'm still walking through and learning stuff that I never had experienced before because that's how life works. But I think it's like you said earlier, we have to make sure that we are rooted in Scripture and that that's our authority, not different voices out there on the internet and podcasts, teachings, even sometimes your own pastor. Make sure and run it through the Scripture because that is the authority of God for sure. That's right. These folks don't have authority over the word of God. The word of God has authority over them. 100%. And so we always need to be really deeply trying to understand what God's word is saying, not so that we don't have to listen to anyone else, but so that we aren't fooled into thinking that something that someone says the Bible says is actually binding on our lives. So yeah, we'll leave it there. We're gonna have a few more of these conversations. We've got several topics lined out that we'll talk about, and we're gonna be having some guests on Thinking Christian as well who have written on these topics. Just had the guys who wrote Lionhearted on the Lindell's and they were great. And so I'm looking forward to having that episode out. It may come out before this episode, but be sure to check that out. And then we've got some other folks who are going to be on that address these issues. And we're really gonna try to dive as deeply into it as we possibly can and present what I hope to be a more biblically faithful picture of biblical masculinity or what I would say is men living under the authority of God, women living under the authority of God, and how those differences between man and woman really do influence the way we live under Christ's authority. So this was great. Thank you for everything. That was awesome. Very good, man. Well, we'll catch you. I appreciate your participation here, Nate, and we'll catch everybody on the next episode of Thinking Christian. Take care, everybody. 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.com, you'll find dozens of other faith-centered podcasts in their network. They've got shows about prayer, Bible study, parenting, and more. I'm Mark Vinet, host of the Historical Jesus Podcast, which presents the new series, Miracles, focusing on biblical miracles from the Old and New Testament. Join me on the Historical Jesus Podcast as I explore the interesting, compelling, intriguing, and wonderful miracle stories of the Bible and the many great miraculous events inspired by the words and deeds of Jesus Christ.