🛤️ Patterns Over Principles: A New Framework for Biblical Manhood

00:00:01 Speaker 1: The world is becoming increasingly proficient at telling stories that deny God. As such, we need Thinking Christian to become as natural as breathing. Welcome to the Thinking Christian podcast. I'm doctor James Spencer, and through calm, thoughtful theological discussions, Thinking Christian highlights the ways God is working in the world and questions the underlying social, cultural, and political assumptions that hinder Christians from becoming more like Christ. Now onto today's episode of Thinking Christian. Hey, everyone, welcome to this episode of Thinking Christian. I'm doctor James Spencer and I'm joined to get my doctor Shiesh Pharma, and we're going to be discussing or continuing our discussion about Biblical manhood, Biblical masculinity and really the way I would phrase it is the way to be a male disciple of Jesus Christ. And today we're going to be looking at the work or one work of a gentleman named Dale Partridge. Now I don't know that Dale Partridge is overly influential in this whole conversation, but the reason I wanted to address his work is because I think it illustrates a trend that I've seen in a lot of different work on masculinity and maybe multiple trends, but the one that I noticed when I first read his work was he's trying to frame Jesus as the ultimate male, and in doing so, he's reading back masculine character categories onto Jesus and I think creating a problem that he maybe doesn't even realize he's creating, which is, if male and female Christians are all to conform to the image of Christ and Christ is uber masculine, it seems to me that you have to do one of two things. You either have to be able to distinguish between what is faithful, humanly faithful in Jesus and what is masculine, so that women emulate the faithfully human part of Jesus but not necessarily the masculine aspects of Jesus. Or you have to shoot for androgyny, meaning that as women conform to the image of Christ, they are going to become more and more masculine. Now, in the context of his work, it's clear that he does not want the latter. It's also clear that he can't do the former, that there's no chance that you're ever going to get the separation between. Okay, this is where Jesus is being manly or masculine, and this is where he's being faithful, and so to me, these alternatives are there's a through line of those two problems in almost every book on masculinity that tries to do this with Jesus, tries to do it with other biblical characters. And we'll see some of that as we go through his work. So I'm just going to read a passage and then Ashishua will kind of dive in and start talking about this. I know there's a lot of points to raise here, so we'll just jump right into it. Here's a passage from one of his articles. Will link this in the show description. I'd encourage you to take a look at it. This is what he says. Quote, Jesus was a man conceived by a virgin, born, biologically male, raised by a carpenter, a boy wise beyond his years, fully divine, and potently masculine. In fact, if you hate masculinity, you will despise the biblical Jesus. He wasn't interested in getting to know his feminine side, nor was he the macho and chauvinistic domineer that some failing men have become Jesus was the epitome of manhood, a stalwart in mission, bold, obedient to the point of death, fearless in his proclamation of truth, sacrificial in his acts of love, and resolved to do his father's will. Jesus had forced authority and control in a way that marked him as virile and robust. So I'll just start out and say a couple of things about this Number One. When I read this, I thought to myself, how is it that being stalwart and mission bold, obedient to point of death, fearless in his proclamation of the truth, sacrificial in his acts of love, and resolved to do his father's will. How are any of those related to simply being a man? Because when I read that list, I would want my daughters, for instance, my wife, women in the church to exhibit those exact same characteristics, Like we don't want our we don't want female Christians not to be stalwart and mission bold, obedient to the point of death, fearless in the proclamation of the truth, sacrificial, an actor at acts of love, and unresolved to be to do the father's will. Right. So, I think there's a real dichotomy here that he's setting up. He's highlighting these things that and labeling them as characteristics of manhood when they're really probably not that associated with Jesus's maleness, right with Jesus's sex. 00:05:00 Speaker 2: Yeah, to be clear, none of those things that he mentions are things I want to argue against, right, yeah, men should be those things. Now what he means by those I don't follow that train. Yeah, but I also with you want to say, just people should be those things. This is the life of receiving oneself from another. Yes, nothing about that is this is an undefined phrase, but probably my favorite undefined phrase just because of how cartoonish it sounds. Potently masculine. Yes, I'm not sure what potently masculine is as opposed to just masculine, but none of them seem definitively potent other than maybe you want to say potently human. To your point, yeah, And as he begins to impact those and we can get into some of the details of it, it's it's like he makes the mistake of because Jesus came in the form of a man, therefore what he does is a is a model for being distinctly a man. Yes, and to a point that you've made repeatedly, if he has done that, and if that's what Jesus is doing, right, we think of Paul saying imitate me as I imitate Christ. Okay, Paul was a man as well, So is he talking only to men as well? What does that mean for women in the church? What is what's being commended to not just necessarily the church, but women in general. Nothing is being commended to. 00:06:46 Speaker 1: Them, apparently. 00:06:48 Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm not sure what to make of that, right, I think his leap is unjustified. There's nothing in the text that justifies reading it in such a narrow gendered way. There's nothing in the text that leads me to believe that because the person in question is in fact a male, therefore what follows is distinctly applicable only to males. Right, that's a leap, But the implication is even worse, and that then there is therefore no. 00:07:23 Speaker 1: Model for women. 00:07:27 Speaker 2: Yeah, and I'm not sure that you know, just to extend what Paul saying that when he says imitate me is immitate Christ. It's not clear to me at all that that's it. That's an admonition towards men only. 00:07:39 Speaker 1: No one, I mean you could walk through, you could walk through the Book of a Philippians. Right, A paphroditis set up as a model, you know, gesturing toward this sort of self sacrifice that Christ does that we see in the in the Philippians two one through eleven, Right, Paphrodite is Timothy Paul himself. These are all models of the sort of self sacrifice that Jesus is demonstrating in Philippians, and Paul is giving these examples almost building up to that they're all men. I don't think that's on purpose. I think it's coincidental. I think what Paul is saying is, look at this sort of self sacrifice, and this is where I've seen this thus far, and they happen to be men. I don't think it's limited to males. And what I would say, just to make clear sort of my position on this, I don't have a problem with someone saying there are many things that male Christians could learn from the life of Jesus that would be specifically applicable to male disciples. I think because men and women embody the world differently, because we interact with social structures differently, because they're a whole slew of things that you know, our existence as men differ from the existence of women. I think there are unique things that we can learn different ways of our embodying, things like being stalwart and mission or obeying the father's will or what have you. There is a differentiation there. My problem is that he isn't exactly doing that. He's saying that because Jesus is male, he is now the picture of manhood, and all of these things, these good things that Jesus does, are affiliated with manhood. And I want to reverse that and say, no, Jesus does a lot of good things as a human and as males and females. We now need to learn from those as we seek to sit under the authority of Christ as his disciples. And so that may end up looking a little different for men and women, but it isn't because Jesus was male. 00:10:00 Speaker 2: Right to your point of the list that Paul gave that happened to include just a group of men, Yeah, I mean that there's more to be said there. I think, right, we're talking about a culture that it's been pretty well researched. Did happen to have a distinct understanding of what kind of mobility was possible? 00:10:26 Speaker 1: Right? 00:10:26 Speaker 2: Like physical geographic mobility, and generally speaking, men had that opportunity in a way that women didn't. But nothing within what Paul said is assuming that Paul affirms that kind of organization, no right. In fact, as we've talked about before, if Paul exists as someone with no ability whatsoever to change the social order, and no ability whatsoever to exercise any sort of political instrumentality for a new kind of society, then all he has is his disposal is to take what is already existent, which is a world in which there is a greater geographic mobility possible for men, and then employee loosely speaking, right more in a disciple forum, not in an employer employees sort of sort of a way, but to employ these men that have the opportunity to continue in the sort of ministry that he's talking about. Right, But that doesn't mean that in other places, think for instance, the Book of Colossians, that he's not also commending women who are deeply important within the functioning and establishment of a church. Additionally, I think it's worth noting an important feminist critique of that sort of thinking that Partridge is giving. And I realize that for some people the moment you hear the adjective feminist, to the critique, it's liberal, throw it away, and I'd like to encourage holding off on those sorts of prior judgments and to hear it through. But the feminist critique is, oftentimes we see this sort of language of a commendation of humility that seems to be distinctly driven towards men, because we live in societies historically, almost universally, where men are the ones in positions of power or control or dominion, and women have already, by social expectation and formation, been put into a submissive, servile mode. So that then when we say a counterbalance to that is be humble, it's not really directed at those who don't even have the opportunity to exercise the kind of individual and social power to have to be told be humble. Right, And so what feminist scholars will often point out is then that notions like be humble directed towards a woman register in a very different way. In fact, probably often aren't precisely applicable the way that we think about it when we say men, be humble. Now, why this is important, I think it is fairly simple, and I'll use my kids as an example. You know, every so often, as most parents have to do, you have to refresh house rules. And one of the rules that I find myself having to refresh is we're going to listen and obey right away. That's an important tagline right away. And when I say that, I'm almost always looking at my oldest son. Now I have four kids. Yeah, it's not as though I'm not wanting that to be applicable to the other three kids, right, But everyone in the room knows why I'm looking at my oldest son when I say that. The other three just don't have the same struggle with that rite away piece versus my oldest son, who's more inclined to say, oh, I'm happy to listen, but these ten things first. Yeah, No, it's time for dinner. Get to your seat. Anything else you have to offer once we start eating, you can say it right. The others seem to get that. 00:14:19 Speaker 1: A little bit better. 00:14:20 Speaker 2: That doesn't mean that it's a rule only for the one right. So the parallel here is that with the feminist critique, with the way that or against the way that Partridge is reading, he seems to kind of miss the ups and downs or the valleys that go with audience. Even if we were to grant him, which I'm not sure that we can, Even if we were to grant him the sort of gender distinction and who these statements are being made towards. There are social patterns at work and historic familial environments at work that mean that sometimes you do have to say listen and obey right away and direct it more specifically at one person or one group of people, even if you mean that for everybody. And I think that's kind of what's at stake with the feminist It's not that the feminist scholars saying the kind of virtues that are at play with you. For some feminists would say let's do away with humility as a virtue. That's a longer conversation. But the core, I think at players, the sorts of things we're trying to get at are missed. If we're saying, if we're if if we're saying that these things belong to a woman's place already, then to direct that commendation towards a woman misses the larger social pattern understood. Yeah, right, So I think that's a kind of texture that Partridge would benefit from. 00:15:47 Speaker 1: Yeah, he would benefit from a lot of different texture. I think it's I think one of the more is satisfying aspects. And I did read his book. So we're referencing an article just because it's a little easier on the podcast. But I did read his book. There isn't a lot more argumentation there that I would find compelling in his book than I find in his article. I think what we see is that there's this constant sort of assumption of what masculinity is, and then a reading back out of the Biblical narratives and finding masculinity in various places, but then really missing what you would call texture. Right, so you have I'll give it. For instance, in his article, he talks about this idea that the newly created atom was sexually male but intrinsically how's the qualities of man and woman? That is nowhere in the Biblical narrative, you know. I mean, if you think about how many lines there are in Genesis even describing this man, right, you have maybe three verses, none of which really deal with any sort of characteristics of Adam. Adam is a fairly flat character, quite frankly, the entire time he's on the scene. The only time we actually see him respond to something is when the woman is made. And I think that it's those kind of assertions that he's drawing on that start to border on their ridiculous that they are just so far out there and evidently used to advance his particular argument with no particular substance behind them, Right, That is really deeply problematic of what he's doing. Now, we've said before interpretation is difficult, and there are possibilities for interpretation. Then there are probabilities for interpretation, and there's a range of things that could be right, some that might be right, and some that seem more likely than others to be right. And then there's fantasy. Then there's just total conjecture. And I think this is total conjecture. This notion that the man prior to the creation of woman housed all the qualities of male and female makes absolutely no sense for one and it has no biblical basis for it. I mean, the whole reason for creating moment is because it wasn't good for man to be alone. 00:18:44 Speaker 2: Right, That's a key point to bring up here. Right, if all of the qualities of male and female are within atom, arguably, what we're putting into the text is this notion of self sufficiency. But the whole thrust of Genesis two that leads us to that kind of climax of God putting out him to sleep and drawing forth the woman. Yeah, is a move against self sufficiency. It's not good for him to be alone, that's right, and for him to see that. One of the things he does is he names animals and notices by the way that the animals are not alone. It's showing a sort of neediness. It's showing something that's missing from him, not in a sinful way, but in a sense of what truly is full and complete is the being in and with and for another, but also receiving oneself from another. And that I think just the logic of that passage. Again talking about probabilities of interpretation, but the logic of that passage flies in the face of all of these things are present in atom No. Actually, that's the opposite of the implication and the fall. In Genesis three, it's worth noting that we've talked about in another series is a movement towards self sufficiency. Wrongly so right, Neither one of these people, Adam or Eve, is to is to see themselves in a godlike manner, as self sufficient, but both of them ultimately move in such a way as to do that. 00:20:21 Speaker 1: I will say I also find, in addition to that particular passage where he's making this assertion, I also find all of his biblical evidence related to why Christ is particularly exhibiting the boldness, fearlessness, courage, you know, those kind of things that he lists. He goes through and tries to sort of lay these out, citing various biblical passages for different things to demonstrate Christ's masculinity in these, but there is no reference to masculinity in any of them other than Jesus being male, which again I think there's a collapsing here that we should just name that being male doesn't automatically mean masculine. And that's a real tension here, I think in this piece as well, is that there's a tendency to think that if you're male, you're going to be masculine. That's obviously not the case, given that he talks about the effeminate church, and you know, like there's a way for men to be effeminine, and so you have to import these other categories back in on this, and again we're back at that sort of problem of can you really distinguish when Christ is being faithful as a human that male and female should both emulate in their own unique ways, or is Christ being masculine? In which case, what do you do when you're telling women, hey, emulate Christ? He never deals with that dynamic. And like I said, even the passages that he cites, I don't disagree that they demonstrate Christ's fearlessness or his boldness or his what have you. The tension for me is that they don't point to his masculinity. So I don't know, and any thoughts on. 00:22:15 Speaker 2: That, Yeah, agreed, He's importing this notion of masculine. And it's important to distinguish here what we're trying to say when we say, quote masculine, masculine is a is a social gender term, right, It has a content of what does it mean to fulfill this? So you can be male but not masculine in so far as whatever it is that entails big masculine, you just don't fulfill. Right. So that's the real question at play here. And not only do we not get a content of what that masculine is and the text, we also don't get any indication that that's even in the framework of the authors of the text. I think it's an important point that you just raised as well, that the New Testament and really the Old Testament both depict the covenant communities that are at play in the position of bride. Yeah, and bride in this case in terms of the church. With the Old Testament, Biblical Israel is made up of men and women. It's made up of old and young, it's made up of middle aged, right, It's a whole spectrum of people. And this is a point that I've tried to make to students, and I find it it really actually gets them to pause and maybe hurts their brain a little bit to think about it. But if we're going to play the game of masculine feminine, if we're going to play that, then we have to consider the strangeness of the call for a body, a covenental body that is made up of men and women, to be identified in the whole as feminine. Yeah right, Yeah, Now, I don't think we should be playing the masculine feminine game and game in quite this way, right, But we should pay attention if we're going. 00:24:12 Speaker 1: To write, right. 00:24:14 Speaker 2: But it's worth pointing even if we set aside the masculine feminine game, and we just point out the church is called the bride of Christ even independently of that masculine feminine social sort of circumscribing of roles and formation, men are in fact called to the kind of submissiveness that's often placed socially upon women. From reading the text, right, the larger thrust, so I'll draw from the Theologiannandre Bloche here, the larger thrust of for instance, Ephesians five, which Partridge appeals to where it says, men love your wives as Christ love the Church. Is also to point out that the larger image here is that covenant community of church, because that covenant community of church now places you. Most importantly. He uses the word theodramatically, which just means within the larger forming of the story of God as the bride of Christ. So everything that's given there for the man in that particular setting is meant to be an image of what the man himself is supposed to do before Christ. Yeah, and that's before we even talk about the larger setting of Ephesians five, where Paul first speaks of each of these people, male and female, submitting to one another, right and that's before we consider that in some ways the ask upon men was actually greater than the supposed ask upon women, as submit to your husband's right. Yeah, men are now put in this position of a kind of obedience all the way to the point of the cross. 00:26:07 Speaker 1: Yes. 00:26:07 Speaker 2: And by the way, remember ultimately you're part of the bride, which means really this is a picture just of getting to the real issue, which is submit to Christ, who was the one who, as the male already was the one who submitted. Right, He's submitted to the will the Father. Yeah. 00:26:23 Speaker 1: Yeah, not my will, but yours be done. 00:26:25 Speaker 2: So through and through on so many levels, this idea of submission and obedience actually doesn't give you a picture of masculine or feminine. It just gives you, as you've said, as we've said, being a human being and actually even giving you an image of the inner life of God's self. Right, the son submits to the will of the Father. The spirit submits as the voice or the breath of God going forth, and even in that moment the Father gives all that the Father has to the sun. Right, Like, there's mutual acts of submission all the place. So to be human and to imitate to imitate policy, imitates Christ. It's just a giant list of whether you're male or female. It's to live for the other and to receive oneself and fullness from the other. 00:27:19 Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think we've just as you say that, there's something about what does it look like for us to be in union with one another, serving one another, mutually submitting to one another. And this is the context of Ephesians five as well, five fifteen through twenty one talk a lot about these things. Somehow we've gotten caught up in the whole who should lead kind of conversation, who's ultimately in charge at this moment? And how do women fit within the overall structures of the church. And I just think that's a It's not an unimportant conversation, right I wouldn't, I wouldn't trivialize it. But what I would say is, I think we've detached it, to coupled it in many ways from this conversation that we're having right now, which is we're all supposed to be a mutual submission to one another. I said this to one of the guests we were talking about. It was Kristo mccurlan. She wrote a book on authority, and we were talking a little bit about it. She was going through First Timothy two and just talking about some of the interpretive challenges there, and she talked about, you know, the why, you know, why wouldn't we follow the clear teaching subscripture kind of thing, And my comment was, you know, it's not unclear, right, A clear passage is Romans twelve ten, outdo one another and showing honor. Right, if we want a clear passage to follow Romans twelve ten is just for me, it's hard to be we are to outdo one another and showing honor. If we start there in our conversations, a lot of these things they may not go away. I don't think the interpretive questions go away, but they're dealt with in a much different manner. If we're trying to out do one another and showing honor, that is not And I honestly I think some people would hear that and they'd be like, oh, that's just you know, that's a feminine idea of some sort. Right, you're just trying to cultivate empathy and compassion and just let people do whatever they want to do. No out doing one another and showing honor doesn't mean that people get to do whatever it is that they want to do. It means that we bear with one another in ways that are leading each other to become more conformed at the image of Christ. And so to me, it's like, if we could focus in on some of those clearer passages, we'd have much less trouble dealing with some of these interpretive issues. Then it seems like we really do. People tend to get mad, they tend to get anxiety about these things. They tend to have frustrations. I mean again sort of at the end of his article here he goes back into the effeminate infiltration of the church as as seemingly the underlying problem for which the masculinity of Jesus is the solution. And I sit back and I say to myself, is the effeminate infiltration of the church really the church's biggest problem? Like it is what we need or manly are men in the church, And then the church's problems would really be solved. You know, I don't have any problems saying, sure, I wish there were more men in the church. I wish there were more godly men in the church. But it's not so that we could solve an effeminate problem, right, don't you just want more folk in the church. On some level, it just feels like we're this has gotten so goofy. And there's one point in this. I'll just read this letter, this little section, because if you just read this part, I think people would actually agree, right like I would agree outside the context of this article, I would agree with this statement. He says, coffee shop and bookstore Christianity is no match for prison cell and angry mob Christianity. The truth is Church history is saturated with Christians being tortured, dismembered, eate and shot, hung racked, box buried, and burned. For Christ might be a little overkilled. The timidity of the current church, which submits to government overreach and complies with laws enforcing unbiblical supportive sexual sin, will be costly. Now I wouldn't phrase it that way, but I get the point right that even if we read through something like the Book of Revelation, the Letters to the Seven Churches, what's being pushed on there is, Hey, Church, don't compromise your faith in the midst of worldly pressures. It's something around them. And so do we need a resilient church that is willing to suffer the consequences of not compromising our faith. Of course we do, right. I think that's an of course. But what I think he's trying to do is say that, of course, yes, we need an uncompromising faith, and to have that, we need more men. That's where I sort of jump off the train. You know, to have an uncompromising faith, we need to be more masculine. Again, That's where I jump off the train. I don't buy that next leap, because I don't see that that is what the Bible is really encouraging us to do and be. The Bible is really encouraging us to be like Christ, not in the manliness sense that he's arguing, but in the faithfulness sense that we see in Christ, that we see in Paul, that we see in the you know, the Hall of Faith in Hebrews eleven, right, all these different places right where these pictures of faithfulness are held out for us, regardless of male and female. That's what is necessary. But I think he's trying to sort of solve a problem it's not actually there. And maybe the better way to say that he's trying to solve a problem that he's uncomfortable with as opposed to solving the problem that we really need to address. 00:33:22 Speaker 2: Is it fair to say that the problem he sees is really a political issue, and let me set up why I'm asking it that way. Yeah, he sets it up as an issue of masculinity. I can think back twenty five years ago as as a teenager going to church, not from a church tome, but having gone to church and it was Father's Day and hearing basically the same message about the need for men to be men, and books being passed out that I think I still have somewhere buried that was on a very cringeable book. To me, I won't mention the name, not worth it. 00:34:07 Speaker 1: But it's a. 00:34:08 Speaker 2: Call that I've been hearing for a long time. As I've studied, I've seen this call really dates back to well before my lifetime. It's a pretty common call with an American Christianity for men to be men in the church, to be church the church. That the world is being effeminized and the church is being effeminized with it. I look around and I don't see that, to be honest. I look at what the biggest earners at the box office have been over the last decade decade and a half, and they're superhero movies that emphasize a particular image, specifically of the men. Right for every Wonder Woman in Black Widow that you have out there, there's at least ten Superman's and Doors and Iron Men and Batman that are bulging muscles. I think back to the late eighties when when the modern superhero genre in film form was when it began, and it began with that Michael Keaton Batman movie and the great, the great criticism was, I don't think Michael Keaton can be Batman. He's too small. He does he's he's short, and he's not muscular, right, Yeah, I look at the comic book world that that that came out of, I mean, unrealistic muscles bulging out of these very manly men. I look about look at the film industry that preceded the rise of the comic book movie as the as the Supreme, and it's the Arnold Schwarzenegger Sylvester Stallone archetype. 00:35:41 Speaker 1: Yeah. 00:35:42 Speaker 2: Before that, it was the the Western and the spaghetti Western with Clint Eastwood. If anything, the image of the man has become more ripped and more exaggeratedly masculine. You look around at you know, clothing and cologne and shaving commercials, and like, yeah, that's an image of men. 00:36:09 Speaker 1: That it's very muscular, right, right, right. 00:36:13 Speaker 2: And then when I look within the church and I see that this, this phenomenon of men be men predates my lifetime, it's not clear to me what it is that he sees going on that he's harping against, until I say, oh, I think this is politically motivated. I think there's a particular desire to have a particular ordering or control or center of locus for the country or for culture or civilization or however he wants to put it. And that image seems to be driving him. Because the sorts of markers he's pointing to culturally and within the church, I just don't see that as existing. 00:36:58 Speaker 1: I mean, I think it's interesting that he referenced is the government overreach and complies with laws enforcing unbiblical support of sexual sin. Now the government overreach. He's writing this in twenty twenty two, so sort of post COVID and a closeure church. You can't gather those kind of things right, which I know is contentious in the Christian community. I went to a church that didn't meet physically and we did just fine. I think that there needed to be much more grace and sort of a Romans fourteen fifteen attitude about how church is dealt with that. But it turned into a point of machismo. And so I can totally see your point here where there are these political arrangements that I think are difficult. The only place I would expand that sort of political notion is that I would say it's not political necessarily on the American stage, but I think it's also political within the church. And maybe that's what you mean too, in the sense that you know there you know, I, yeah, maybe there are more women in the church than men. That's a point that he raises in the article, and I didn't look at that research. I didn't I didn't check that out. My recollection of the last time I looked at it is that there are more women than men in the church. But if you look at the leadership of churches, I'm going to go ahead and bet that there are more men involved in leadership at churches than there are women. That the number of women lead pastors is a fraction. It's almost like the superhero movies. Right, You've got Black Widow and Wonder Women, and then the rest are males, you know. And so I think that what we have is largely that in churches, and that would extend down into more of the invisible leadership structures of the elder boards, right, and a lot of that's driven by the complementaryan perspectives and those kind of things. And so it's just difficult for me to understand why he thinks this is such a problem, given that if you look across the last fifty one hundred years, probably the entire history of America, you've had men leading churches the entire time. You've had men leading denominations the entire time. Like, I'm not sure this is a woman problem and a feminization problem so much as it is a the church does not have I would say a masculine feminine problem, Like we don't have a bad mix of that. What we have is we have compromise, we have disagreement, we have lack of formation. However, you want to say that we have a discipleship problem, and we don't. We have a compromise problem. That's sort of the way I would diagnose it. And so all of this that he's frustrated with. With regard to, you know, the effeminization of the church, I tend to agree with you. I don't see it. What I think I resonate with is the notion of timidity. I can get my head around that one, right, that the church may be too timid, may be too willing to compromise in order to be more comfortable. I could see that one. But I don't see that as an effeminate characteristic. I just see it as unfaithfulness. 00:40:30 Speaker 2: Agreed. Yeah, that's a being formed into the image of Christ issue issue. It's a eating from the tree of self sufficiency, the knowledge of good and evil issue. Right. It's which is, by the way, not a male female issue. Both did it, It's not. It's not clear to me that it's a masculine feminine issue, and it's worth noting as a footnote anyway that I think far more men have left the church because they don't live into these masculine ideals and they don't find a place for themselves in the church then have left the church because the church has mauve walls whatever mav is. As Driscoll said, yeah, yeah, yeah, forgive me everyone out there. I don't know what MAV is. 00:41:22 Speaker 1: I will just say sort of as we close this up, I think the diagnosis is really an issue, right, I mean, we've made sort of a big deal about this and the mischaracterization I think of faithfulness for masculinity, this sort of merger of Jesus being male. So then Jesus is ultimately the ultimately masculine and we have lessons that we can learn as men from Jesus being masculine that will help us retake and reclaim a church that has become feminized. I think that entire diagnosis and the entire narrative is distorting because, in part if you really take a second and think about it, what's on top of all of that, what's really driving this whole project forward? It isn't Christ, It's masculinity. And it's a particular notion of masculinity. Right. Yes, they've merged that with Jesus be masculine, like Christ was masculine. Well what did it mean to be that Christ is masculine? Well, let me show you. And then it goes into this sort of spiral of well he was this, and he was this, and he was this. I mean, even the reference of Jesus was a carpenter. Okay, but I'm going to go ahead and bet that the women of that day and age were pretty hands on, rougher and tougher women than what any of us are today. Right, unless you're sort of a blue collar worker who works with his hands, works with her hands every day, if you're an office worker or white collar kind of person, it's almost a guarantee that these people had a rougher life than you have, right, And so even that reference, you kind of sit back and you're like, well, of course Jesus would have worked with his hands probably. I mean, we have reference to him being a tecton, and so he was a builder of some sort that wasn't manly, right in a masculine sense. It was probably a male dominated procession, But that didn't make it masculine, just meant that that's what men did in that day. And so I think we've got to leave room for I guess my bigger point is when we start applying this layer of masculinity over the top of Jesus, that's really what we're doing. We're putting it over the top of Jesus, and as Christians, we should be really uncomfortable with that that all of a sudden, some other standard other than Christ is driving the way we think about Jesus. That's that to me, is the biggest problem with this sort of line of thought is that it sets up masculinity as a standard outside of and separate from discipleship for men in the church to live up to. And so I think his diagnosis of the problem and the solution he suggests is only going to lead the church down darker roads, not necessarily better roads. Agreed, All right, Well let's leave it there. This was a discussion. Like I said of Dale Partridge's article, Again, we're not trying to pick on these folks, but they do offer helpful examples of the way that these things can be misread. And so we'll link the article in the show notes, encourage you to take a look at it, and as you do, just really read it with a critical I saying, does anything he's saying necessarily relate to masculinity? And if you had to after you read the article, could you actually describe what masculinity is? And I think you'll you know, people who read this honestly will have to say no to both like they won't be able to construct masculinity. They won't know exactly what masculinity is. And most of the passages he addresses certainly could be applied to women or men, they aren't specifically masculine. And so he's one of the gentlemen that does this. I think there are others, and so this is something I would say we need to watch out for, not only in masculinity feminine conversations, but probably in a whole host of other areas as well. Anyway, thanks Ashish for being here, thanks for this conversation, and thanks everybody for listening. We'll catch on the next episode of thinky Christian. 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