Got Parker, my brother, with me today. Haven't you haven't been on the podcast in a while, It's been a long time. We are talking today continuing a kind of a trend we've done on this podcast where we answer your questions if you email podcast at grangersmith dot com. And the trend has been that I take kind of the most popular questions to me and bundle them and we discussed that, and one of the most popular questions I get is about masculinity in a way of saying,
in other words, what is it? What does it mean to be a man? What is a man? Which is surprisingly in twenty twenty four a thing, and that changes, Believe it or not, it changes over millennia, over centuries, even over decades. That answer changes depending on your worldview. The most common understanding of what does it be what
does it mean to be a man? Today? The most common kind of knee jerk reaction to that is strong burrely able to work with this, hands, doesn't submit to anyone or anything, uses brute force for protection if you if you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything, like that old Aaron tip and nineties country song. So that's kind of what we're going to dive in today. Ant Man has provided us a few videos, and so Parker, I've have like I've seen I kind of know the premise,
but I have not seen these videos. So you and I are going to experience it for the first time. What does it mean to be a man?
You know, I've described this in a variety of different ways every time I answered this question. I've written a whole essay on this thing, but I'll give it to you just off the top of my head right now, because, like I said, I think that you can talk about it in different ways, but I think primarily it means to be responsible for yourself, but not just yourself, but
to be able to take care of others. Because it's the minimum bar of a man to not be a negative on society, right, But a man, a true man, needs to not be able to just take care of himself, but be able to take care of other people to be a net.
So I guess we should ask like this, So far are we in agreeance with this guy? The minimum bar of being a man is don't be a menace to society, And what you're moving for is to be a protector within society.
I guess let's.
Get some more data because I'm kind of with you here. Let's continue to be a net positive, right.
That's why I advocate for men paying for dates and taking care of women and doing those things, because.
It was just strangely offensive to a certain population.
I like, it amazes me that it's the same, you know, it just drives me nus because I have a podcast with my wife called Better Than Perfect and we talk about traditional relationships on there, and there would be so many angry guys commenting on it that are like, she should pay for her own stuff. I'm not going to pay for And I'm like, these are the exact same guys that are upset about feminism, And yeah, I'm like right,
cause you can't have it both ways. Like if you want women to be feminine and you want to be mouse, you want to be the authority in your house and be the man, you got to pay for everything. That's that's how it is, Like you got to take care of everybody if you want that authority. But it's the same guys, and it just drives me nuts because.
So this is the thing. It's like, you need to be strong and you need to be a protector, and you need to provide that's what it means to be a man. Where does that come from? What's the foundation of that? Is that stainable?
Yeah, it's interesting because I thought that this was going to go. I thought that this initial video is going to go in a different direction of more of just the David Goggins route or a little bit more straightforward pushing through obstacles equals masculinity, And this is already immediately going to more of a selflessness defines masculinity, which is interesting. Like you said, as I wonder where those guys are inherently getting that. What in us tells us that the
men should be selfless. I was reading article on the Titanic the other day and the women and children like, go first, that's inherent in us that the man should sacrifice himself so that the women and the children go like, why is that inherently in us? And you and I would say, well, that's biblical. That's the ultimate example of that was Christ laying his life down.
Greater love hath no man than this. Yeah, it's like the captain goes down with the ship. That's the thing, and that kind of translates into the family sphere, the career world, the team, laying your life down as the captain of the ship or the leader of the household, or the teammate who goes all out for his team, like you reward a player when you see that they have blood on their pants and mud and you go, man, what do you say? You say, he gave it all
for his team. So, like you said, no matter our worldview, that's especially right now in twenty twenty four, everyone is agreen that part of masculinity means giving yourself up for the greater people or group or family or team, and that is an echo in Christian what we look toward in Jesus as he gave his life up for us, us meaning the people that believe that he did that, and God enters his own creation and suffers in it. So suffering is a part of this as well. And
I agree with you. I didn't think this is where this is going. This is what's beautiful about ant Man finding these videos because it's like, hey, we're going to We're gonna do a podcast answering a question about masculinity which gets asked all the time, and ant Man's like, here's how you're going to do it, so we're reacting to both of us might be a little caught off guard, and it I think it's good perspective. Let's see if this video has anything else.
To say and all, because what happens is they're so confused. They were taught they're not supposed to have the authority. They want that authority, but somehow they feel guilty about that authority, and then they feel conflicted because they're doing these particular things.
That's interesting.
I mean, that whole idea of accepting responsibility, I think is a huge one.
So I don't mind telling you that.
But I my formation in this comes from my Catholic worldview. And by the way, I always spind it funny when people are on shows and they say, hey, you've been successful, John, tell us what the key to your success is, and they are talking about a lot of different things, and then one of them happens to be and oh, by the way, my faith, and the person's like, I don't want the actual answer, I want the fake one that's
going to be placating my audience. So like, for me, if you said what drives me is my atheism, and I doubt that you're an atheist, I don't know, that's not my point. Or if you said it's that I'm a Stoic or I am a Catholic or a Buddhist, I.
Would be interested in that answer, because that's your answer.
So that's why I'm telling you what mine is, because otherwise people try to guess and it makes it a little easier. So my worldview on this is that really what it takes to be a man are these things that you said, by the way, is super important, but also the ability to sacrifice for a woman exactly, and if you're doing that sacrifice, I think it comes in
a whole way, which brings back together that earlier conversation. Truly, a man is a guy who's I'm attracted to this woman, and I do want something naturally from a physical perspective. But even though I want that, I see you as a whole person, not an object, but as a subject. Therefore you want something too, which is a commitment, and ultimately both want that because also women do want sex.
Men want sex. Men want to commitment. Women want to commit but it comes maybe a different order for a guy. So the guy has to work against his natural self to say, because I respect you, I'm willing to suffer for you in the beginning of the relationship may not work out, but in the beginning of the relationship, I'm going to resist a desire that I have and then ultimately for me, I believe that commitment comes after marriage.
But I also realize help so very loose on all this right, Like he's he's just super loose. He's this guy. I don't know this guy. But what we see a lot in the podcast world is, look, this is your truth. This is my truth. That's fine, that's great. I respect your truth. Here's my truth. And I don't know if he really believes that. But in the podcast world, you want to say it because you don't want to offend anybody.
But in reality, he's pulling from a he's pulling from a worldview that sounds a lot like, Jesus, what were you. I think what we're gonna get on this next one is a little more what you expected. But what were you thinking with the whole David Goggins thing, because that was a phenomenon that you and I both kind of experienced in twenty seventeen ish.
Yeah, I think that our past generation's idea of manhood was, you know, John Wayne type character, someone who who was like stereotypically masculine in that he could, he could fight, he could shoot, he could live off the land, he could use his hands, and he stood up for what
he believed in. And then we've transitioned as a society from that being the ideal, you know, ideal masculinity to a more passive masculinity that almost embraces feminism, that takes a back seat in many ways, that doesn't stand up for anything, that is just more passive.
And so we have.
These these these leaders come up, like the Joe Rogan's, the Jordan Peterson's, and then the David Goggins is a little bit more like brute, just vulgar to the extreme version of that that people have kind of clung onto as millions and millions of young men are lost and searching for meaning and trying to figure out who they are and they and then Jordan Peterson comes along and is extremely intelligent and says, I know exactly who you are, and I know exactly what your purpose is for life.
And he can.
Articulate things so well and speak at the speed that he thinks. And I remember being twenty four years old and borderline agnostic of well, who knows if the Christian God is the only god?
You know?
If I was born in India, maybe i'd believe this. If I was born in China, maybe I'd believe this. What is my purpose? And my dad died when I was twenty and I didn't have a lot of male role models in my life, and I clung on to Jordan Peterson. And Jordan Peterson has some I don't want to go too long on a tangent on this. He has some incredible, incredible things that are extremely helpful.
I'm not dogging on them. I still listen to a lot of things he says.
But ultimately, guys like Jordan Peterson will say, like I said, I know who you are, I know what your purpose is. I know what your problem is, and it's that you're not bearing enough responsibility in your life. And so Jordan Peterson would come and he'd quote Luke nine carry your cross daily and he'd say, I know what this means for you, young men. Stand up, make up your bed, clean up your room. Luke nine, Carry your Cross means you
need to bear ultimate responsibility in your life. Take on responsibility, get a job, be responsible, have a family, provide for them, Carrie, and he even he even used God's name in vane when he was describing me. He said carry your cross daily and I was like, yeah, that that's my purpose is
to bear ultimate responsibility. So and then you have the David Goggins that are a much more just vulgar, vulgar version of that of just destroy your enemies, stop being mediocre, which has good principles for the passivity that's wrong with with masculinity today, but ultimately it's neither of those options are are related in Christ.
So what that what that's doing, and what that video that we just watched is doing, and what Goggins is doing, and what Peterson's doing is there they're matching up. It's kind of like we saw the total eclipse yesterday. They're they're matching up these what people want to hear with what the culture is doing right now, and when it's
a perfect match, everything works well. Tim Keller talks about this how you can't you can't match masculinity with what the culture is doing because that's not a timeline way to do it. For instance, Tim Keller, I'm gonna try my best to remember I remember hearing this a long time ago, he describes it like a that a medieval warrior is. He's he's strong in battle, and he also
has a sexual tendency to love men. So that sexual tendency to love men is looked down upon in the Middle Ages, but to be a warrior looked has looked well upon. So he's gonna highlight that and suppress the other. Highlight the warrior. Do you remember Tim Keller saying this, I don't remember what book it was. Highlight the warrior, suppress the sexual urge. In twenty twenty four, you have a man that like that loves other men, and he
is also aggressive, like a warrior. So in twenty twenty four, he's gonna suppress the aggression and he's gonna highlight the sexual urge. And so both of these men are exactly the same, the medieval warrior and the man in twenty twenty four. They're the same, with two different traits about them that one they will highlight and one they will suppress. All because culture is agreeing with one in one era and culture is agreeing with the other in the other era.
And so it's the same man. And so that that is building a worldview of masculinity on culture and agreeing with culture. Right, let's let's look at this video.
I believe that masculinity essentially died in the West and women became masculine to try to step into that role. I think that, you know, forty fifty sixty years ago, women became the guardians of masculinity to create order and structure when men died or checked out largely. Then we had a written emergence or a rising, a rebirth of masculine, but a child version. I think it was shepherded by
women in the seventies and eighties, maybe the nineties. Child masculinity of okay, mom, i'll be good, i'll be nice, i'll be happy, I'll do whatever you tell me too. I think that rose up and we had a lot of happy wife, happy life became the message during that time. I think that now we're in the middle, or we're maybe at the tail end of what I would call juvenile masculinity. The reborn masculinity has been going through its turbulent teenage years with look at me, I can bang
a pile of supermodels every night. How many bugattis do you have? I'm buff, I'm tough, nobody tells me what to do. We're regaining personal sovereignty, which is the first real step of masculinity.
Okay, so there's two there's two words just right off the bat that is what a that's a sixty second clip. Two words that he says, one reborn and two sovereignty, two very biblical words. And this is another video that's kind of relating to using women and the rise of the power of women, as if that's hurting masculinity in a way. But that's that's their definition of it, that's getting hurt. And he says, you need to be reborn basically,
and you need to gain sovereignty. So both of those used in opposite ways, really opposite ways of what the Bible says and so gaining Parker, I want to ask you what does it mean to gain personal sovereignty? In fact, what is the danger of striving with a purpose to gain personal sovereignty?
Yeah, it's interesting that what he was saying about like a juvenile masculinity of to a certain extent, you're going from just like pure passivity to being reborn. Like we're
all religious, right, whether we admit it or not. Being reborn we're all we're all serving one thing or another, and so I don't know, that's just so interesting to think that juvenile masculinity of your just going purely for like these fleshly desires of like we're seeing a generation of men that are just going for women, money and power, right, And he's basically saying that's taking some form of personal sovereignty, or I think what he means by that is personal
responsibility of like the Jocko Willink Navy seal idea that you're the only thing that you can control is your reaction to certain situations and basically everything, taking ultimate responsibility
basically for everything that happens in your life. And so all that to say, I think that personal responsibility can have good intentions initially of taking that responsibility, just like Jordan Peterson was talking about of it starts with the man taking responsibility and not being the victim like you were talking about before, where in twenty twenty four it's it's much more popular for the man to just play the victim, to just sit back. So that's good that
you start taking personal responses ability. But then to answer your question, where that can become dangerous is if you say, I am in control of literally everything that happens to me, and so it's good to take personal responsibility for things and to claim things when they don't go your way. But then it gets dangerous when you start when you start thinking that you are ultimately what John Piper would call self determinant and.
Thinking that.
Whatever I choose.
Is mine is ultimate.
If that makes sense.
Yeah, And what we're seeing with both of these videos is is two guys three actually claiming that this is the way to do it. We figured out the way to be a man. And what it's doing, back to the tim Keller thing, is it's aligning this with culture. So here's what culture says, and here's here's how we could make this work. Because then my question is to them, because of why, how do you know that? How do you know that this isn't just the Middle Ages and
homosexual reality is bad and warrior good? Or how do you know it's not twenty twenty four homosexually homosexuality good, warrior bad? Suppress or raise up, Raise up or suppress?
How do you know the difference? There needs to be an underlying truth, right that we could lean on, that we could grasp a hold of so that we're not deceived by the changing winds of culture or this swinging pendulum that happens through the decades where it's like the strong man in the nineteen forties and submissive wife, and then by Vietnam the wife raises up and the man becomes submissive, and then it keeps going, and then the
woman gains power and then the man. Now the pendulum swings and now the man needs to be raising up in and the woman needs to be more. It's this mess that no one really understands why. But they're just swinging the pendulum, reacting to culture, overreacting way out into you know, left field, on reacting to the news they see living on CNN or Fox News, which whichever far left or far right they want, and they're reacting and
going this is the answer. And so part of this podcast and what I've done, what I what I desire from this podcast is not to ever give people direct right answers, which we are here shortly we're going to answer this ourselves. But I want to help people be able to think through problems. And so instead of just giving people answer answer answer my girlfriend left me, what do I do you know I'm pregnant, What should I do? Whatever?
These are all these questions I get. Instead of saying here, do this, do this, I would rather equip people to think with their own brain yes, and know where to build that thought those answers from what foundation to build them upon? And so I think that's part of the problem with these clips is these men they're not basing it on anything besides their own culture and their own lives. In twenty twenty four, right, this show is sponsored by Betterhelp. So how is your social battery right now?
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message from me to whoever you want. Okay, so we've reacted to these videos, Park, and now we need to kind of get in ourselves dig in here and discuss what it means to be a man, because that's always the question that comes in, how to be a man, how to be the You know, I'm eighteen, I'm nineteen, my girlfriend's pregnant, I want to get married. I didn't have a good father growing up. How to be a man,
and so there's entire books written on this. So we're not going to answer it in ten minutes, right, We're not going to give a full answer in ten minutes. But when we, like you and I both would do we base all of our answers on the Bible. We start with the Bible and we build up from there. That's the foundation. So, for instance, it in the Beatitudes, Jesus says a lot of amazing things that are very countercultural and whatever culture you're in, for instance, Matthew five five,
blessed are the meek, for these inherit the earth. This, this idea of meekness is often thought of as weakness by people today, and so it's like, I don't want to be weak. I don't want to be inactive. I want to be active. I want to be I want to be a warrior. I want to I want to go to battle. But it's crazy because actually meekness is
not an inactive word. It's very active. It is an active power under control, harnessing power under control, not being sovereign like that one guy said, but being under the control of the sovereign right Galatians five twenty two. Throw some of these out. But the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, for Baran's kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control. Against such things is no law. So here it is again. You could you could say what
does it mean to be a man? You could just fill in right here Galatians five twenty two. The fruit of that have someone who has the fruit of the spirit, which is love, joy, peace, for Barent's kind as, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control, which is gonna. I agree with with Jesus here in Matthew five to five Philippians two three
and four. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility, value others above yourself, not looking to your own interest, but each of you to the interest of others, remembering Jeremna seventeen nine, I put this in here. The heart is deceitful above all things, and beyond cure. Who
can understand it? Someone who Proverbs three five trust in the Lord with all their heart, and it says, and lean not on your own understanding in all your ways, submit to Him, and He will make your path right. One Peter five. Five. Once again I just grabbed random stuff here for conversation purpose. One Peter five to five. All of you clothe yourself with humility towards one another. God opposes the proud, but shows favor to the humble.
Humble you humble yourselves therefore under God's mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time. And here's the most interesting one for this concept. I've preached on this before. One Corinthians sixteen thirteen, and the ESV tells us to be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong. When he says Paul says act like men. That's the only time in the New Testament when it's translated that way, when he says it that way.
In every other time, Old and New Testament, it is be courageous or have courage, So he act like men is being used just like you would say, be courageous. But every other time, especially when you dive into the Old Testament, and you see, like in the Book of Joshua, right right after Moses hands them hands them all authority
to take the people into the Promised Land. And there's a lot of talk between Moses and then Joshua and to the people of be courageous, And it's always in terms of be obedient, be obedient to your God who has brought you here. That's how you be courageous, That's how you act like men. Paul saying, so, how do you take all this, Parker and then say, well, what does it mean to be a man? And then also kind of put that on top of these videos that we've seen of these men saying you need to lay
your life down, you need to be the leader. How do you do that and be meek and have the fruits of the spirit with gentleness and self control, and stand firm in the faith and act like men, which means means obedience when the flash is not wanting you to be obedient. How do you go there?
Yeah, I'll I'll try to give a short answer and then try to relate it back to you because you're gonna know a lot more than me. But I was just thinking, as you were talking about, Like, if I'm listening to you say that stuff, I'm just like, what does that even look like? Practically, Like you're telling me that a man is his characteristics are love, joy, peace,
and patience. Like that sounds like a beta male in khakis and a gigantic collared shirt and he's like one hundred and thirty pounds and he's just like hiding in the back.
So that was my first thought.
And then and then I was thinking a little bit more about you know, one of the things that you might be bringing up in a little bit is just how the Bible describes as a man as the head of the household in the marriage. The man is the head, he's the leader. He's the one who is who is called to be the leader of the house. And then practically what does that mean? Where do we get this this idea of you know, to protect and then to provide, Well, it's through how does he do that through? You know,
it's sacrificial and so to protect? Where do we get all these these stereotypes of like you got to be like muscular and then you have to have a beard right to be a man. And well, I think that inherently it comes from a source of like protection, right, we we want to appear that we could protect our household. Or if you're a single guy, then you want a
woman to know that you could protect her. So like inherently we want to be uh, you know, stronger and then to provide to the stereotype is that you should be able to you know, like work with your hands and be able to hunt and fish and like all those things inherently say that you know, I'm I'm able to provide. So if you're able to think just like one layer deeper in the onion of like our stereotypes of Okay, I need to be jack, have a beard, wear.
A flannel shirt, have an axe in my hand, and be a lumberjack.
B yeah, and be able to survive when when we have to go off grid, when when Biden gets re elected in the world shuts down now. But so just thinking one layer deep rev inherently you know, to protect, to provide, and how all that inherently is is built through what scripture teaches. And then so I'll just I'll relate it back to you of like you know, what does that practically look like for the guy sitting there listening there and he's like, cool, you just spewed a
bunch of Bible verses at me. What am What am I practically supposed to do with that? And I'll kind of footnote that with like to either where you want to go with it. Of Jordan Peterson would answer, and I'm just using him as example because he's such a huge voice right now in masculinity in the world. And
Joe Rogan would say the same thing. Of to answer your question, Granger, to be a man is to bear the heaviest load that I can in society, to find ultimate responsibility, bear that on my back, take it up the hill, and try to make the people around me better, and then that will justify, as he would say, my
miserable existence on this floating rock. And that's the best that we got to justify our existence is just bear responsibility, which has great traits in it, but ultimately it's not it's not the Gospel, and it's not it's not necessarily the example of Christ.
Yeah, so a lot of stuff, like you said earlier, I agree with Peterson in a lot of things I do. I mean, Twelve Rules for Life is just a fantastic book, and I'd recommend that to anybody. He actually reads the Sermon on the Mount in one of those chapters, like chapter six or something. It's been several years since I read it, but he reads, Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth, and he agrees with that,
and I agree with Peterson. What I think the point I'm making is Peterson is today's voice, But who's the voice in twenty thirty four. Who's the voice in twenty forty four? And the reason we have to be careful with these the voices that rise and fall, is that where is Peterson getting his information from. He's just getting data and research from his short life. And he's a psychiatrist and he's done work on green couches for the last couple decades, and that's his data point that he's collected.
But when that starts changing, and it will as the pendulum swings and as more conservative people get in office, and there's less need to rise up against the people they don't like than what is necessary to be a man if you're basing it on society and culture changes. Whole argument I made about the medieval man. So it's not that Peterson's wrong, it's not even that Joe Rogan is wrong. There's things that Joe Rogan and I are gonna line up perfectly if he was sitting in here
right now. There are things that if I say, hey, how do I raise my family? Give me ten things to raise my family, Rogan's gonna give me five or six or seven things that I'm like, yeah, that's good. And then we're gonna disagree, like on two or three things. So it's not that Rogan is wrong, it's not that Peterson's wrong or that they're right, it's where are they where they basing their argument from? Which is what I want to help on this podcast is get people to
think biblically, think on something that is timeless. Think about the creator of the universe provides guidelines for us, and he says, blessed or the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. Why because because you need that to happen. God, God doesn't need us for anything. He doesn't need us at all. That also doesn't mean he doesn't love us. Just because he doesn't need us doesn't mean he doesn't love us. Instead, he says, this is how you're wired,
this is how it created you. You will do better you will have an abundant life here on earth if you do these things, if you serve others, if you treat others as more value as yourself, if you love your enemies, if you forgive, if you're meek instead of overbearing and overpower powering, if you're held within, hold your power within, have obedience to me, and hold yourself under self control, with gentleness and respect and kindness and goodness. You do these things. I don't need you to do them.
I'm saying you do them because I created you in this way. Just like Ford Motor Company made a power stroke to run on diesel. You put diesel in here and you'll do well. You put gasoline in here, it's awful. And so these are our guideline. This is what we base masculinity on is through the Bible. In fact, there's not a chapter in the Bible that says, here's how to be a man. We read it as a whole as we learn who he is who created man. And notice, I'm not even going to the man and woman thing.
I'm not even going to the household thing. Because I have men listening to this, I have women listening to this. I have boys listening to this that aren't married, I have a single people, so that that's not necessarily This isn't This isn't a discussion about how men are supposed to be within the relationship or within a family. This
is men in general. You will do well if you are gentle and have self control, and have love and peace and forbearance and kindness, if you're watchful, if you stand firm in the faith, which is stand firm in your belief, which to stand firm in your trust, and to trust is to know if you know your God. He could say that, say it that way. If you know your God and you know him well, you will rest in him, and you'll you'll do well.
Starts with with us as men bending the knee to our creator, which is not inherent in us. We're inherently prideful. And a lot of men are being told that Jesus is he made us because we're lonely, because he or he made us because he was lonely, right, and that he's just desperately trying to have a relationship with you. Please please please, I need you, I need you so much, I'm so lonely. Please and like an insecure boyfriend, right, like an insecure boyfriend exactly. And I remember you get
in one of your talks on masculinity. You were talking about this this big God that you found when you when you read the scriptures, and he's more like a general. That is, you know, no one is too lost for Christ, like he is calling you.
And he is.
Tender and gentle and lowly, but he is also mighty. And when men come anywhere to looking at his face in the Bible, they fall to their knees and they can't even look at him because of the brightness and the purity of the light. God is a general and you're on the ground and he's saying, get up and follow me. Yeah, And so it's a it's a bigger
call than than the the insecure boyfriend. And and that that walk of true masculinity begins when we bend the need to our creator and acknowledge, acknowledge our sin before him and our need of a savior, which just destroys everything in your in your prideful heart.
Yeah. So so now let's get to the question that you said, well, how does that look practically? You talked about the guy and the khakis in the shirt and you know, big shirt and and and then we're comparing that to the you know what the world says. You got this guy, this lumberjack guy with with you know, harry chest and a flannel shirt, and he's holding an axe in his hand. So I love how you said.
And that's how I responded when I first started understanding who God is, and that will be a journey as I continue. I don't. I still have so much to learn, and that will be a journey till the end of my life, learning more and more, pulling back those layers, like you said, of who he is. But as we begin to see him for who he is, we see a general. We see a football coach that goes, I know this season has been hard, but I have a game plan. Follow me, do this and you'll be well right.
A general that goes, I know this battle has been tough, but I know I will win the war. Who's with me? Men, it's that guy, and I stand up and through that I go, I'm ready. Put me in, coach, put me on the first lines. General, when I'm on the front lines with you, because you're the general, the guy that's promising victory. When I'm on the front lines with that guy,
I'm ready to go. And that is meekness. It's like I could go all over the place on this battlefield, I could do everything, but I want to follow this guy. So it's that submission and meekness and following the general and through that, what do I look like? What is that guy in the front lines who's following the general. Does he look weak? Does he look intimidated? Does he look like he's surrendering to the enemy. Not at all.
He's the guy on the front lines. So when you have a man practically that has seventeen guns, you know, all hidden all around the house, he's he has, you know, an overt desire to be controlling and to be the man of the house and the protector, and if things fall apart, it's on him, and if they run out of money, it's on him. The guy that becomes overly obsessed by that is someone who is lacking love, joy, peace for Baron's kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control.
The mirror image of that is the guy that goes I have some stuff. I responsibly protect my family, but I have a God that I trust, a general that I will go to war with, and I know he is in control, not me. That guy when you just look at you could look at that. It's almost the same guy on camera. It's the same guy, but there's one of them has a trust in something that is not his own and not a personal sovereignty like the
other guy said in that video. He has a sovereignty and a great God who is the sovereign, not his personal sovereignty. Like I said, I will say one more time. I want to encourage people to think on their own, and I don't want people to email. It's been years of people emailing saying how do I do this specific thing in this specific scenario, specific piece of my life?
And I would say to that, I would say, great, here's what I would do, But you need to eventually you need to know how I come up with what I would do? Like where am I getting that from? I don't just have a rolodex in my head of scenarios that play out. It always would just go back to what does God say? How does how has he revealed himself in his word? Not once again, not because he needs us or because he's lonely, but so that
it will be well with us. He's giving He's given us an instruction manual on how He built us, and we do that and we follow that and ultimately these things, these fruits of the spirit start to manifest themselves. Love, joy, peace for parents, kindness, goodness, not because of anything we earn or do, but because of what Christ did for us at the Cross, becoming the substitute for us, because all of us have fallen short of the glory of God, all of us have fallen short of trying to earn
our acceptance with God. And so knowing that God did that through Christ, you know that, you believe, that, you trust, that you submit to that. That's that's what it looks like to be a real man.
Just quickly, as we close, I'll just share like my personal experience with with masculinity. Kind of good that goes along with with the way you just concluded, was is the idea of I recently finished a book called Rescuing Ambition, And so there's this idea and Christianity of a rescue or a redeeming, and to redeem is to set back to its original purpose. So if you're a guy and you're listening to this, like you know that you're built
to work. Man, We're like, we're like work dogs, Like give us a sled, and like we're going to go pull and we're going to go, you know, pull something, and we're going to go carry a load. And but when we're born, the Bible says that we naturally turn away from God and we we worship and serve ourselves
and create things. And so like I remember being a guy in my twenties is just like, you know, I had a great dad growing up, and so I feel like I had a pretty good head on my shoulders and so I wasn't like overcompensating like you see some of these guys that I think, anyway, I won't get down that road. But a lot of times when you hear these very vulgar guys talking about masculinity, it turns out they had like a dad that abused them or left them and abandoned them. And I think that a
lot of it's rooted in that. But I remember being in my twenties and being like, I know that I had a dad who loved me, but I was still searching for purpose, I guess.
And so.
And so I remember hearing Jordan Peterson talk about the dominance hierarchy and how we're all in a All men are in a hierarchy. And so I thought, well, okay, if I'm going to play this game of life, I want to be at the top. I want to be in the top one percent. And Peterson talked about men are are valued based on their income and then their physical strength, because just like we're talking about protect and provide, So to provide is your income, and then to protect
is like is your physical strength. So you know jiu jitsu, guns, that sort of thing. And so my ultimate goal is to make as much money as possible to reach the top of that dominant archy. Why so that I could get the glory and the honor and the power for myself. Because I only had one life. And so when I became a Christian and I considered the claims of Christ and I became convinced of the resurrection, God then redeems
you or switches you back to your original purpose. It gives you a new heart that actually wants to give the glory and honor to God. And so it's not to say that you just lay down and you go to sleep and nothing matters anymore. But it's to say that you have a new purpose now and new desires
for the glory of God rather than yourself. And I think that that framework is just important to put in place, because otherwise, if you're listening to this and you've just been given a to do list of stuff, then it could not be helpful. But I don't know, does that make sense?
Yeah, yeah, totally. It's interesting that you said that, because it made me think that it's unfortunate that the word meek rhymes with weak in the English, right, it's like an unfortunate problem that it meet rhymes with weak. But you know the original word for meek, what that came from. When Jesus said that that's not a throwaway word, when he said that it was known back then that the wild mustangs the ones that you wanted, the ones that
the warriors wanted to go into battle with. Those weren't the workhorses. Those weren't the horses that pulled, you know, pulled around through the fields and made grain. Those those weren't the ones that you took back and forth to the well. Like the war horses were different. So the warrior men would go to the tops of the mountains, that's where they found them. They'd go past all the other wild mustangs and they'd go to the top where the powerful ones were, the wild ones, and they would
find these these mustangs. Have you heard this, These these warrior men would find the wildest of the wild and you'd see him up there on the on the cliff, muscles just gleaming in the sunlight. You know, it's like, I want that horse. That's my battle horse. So they would they would battle for they would fight for a
week to finally get this horse. They would track them from hilltop to hilltop, and they would finally wear the horse out where was just so exhausted and the men were able to overtake it with the horses they were with, and they would take this horse and break it. One warrior would break this horse. And then once he broke that wild horse, that horse trusted that master to the end. It trusted the master because that was the one that
was finally able to harness all that power. And so he took that horse, and that horse would go into battle with him and run against the big line of barbarians and go right into that line and not stop until commanded to. Only a horse like that would run into the death going master, you tell me when to stop. If you don't tell me to stop, I move forward. That is what is considered a meek horse. So when Jesus says blessed are the meek, that's a whole new
meaning for masculinity. Love you guys, see you next episode. Thanks for joining me on the Grangersmith Podcast. I appreciate all of you guys. You could help me out by rating this podcasts on iTunes. If you're on YouTube, subscribe to this channel. Hit that little button and the notification spell so that you never miss anytime I upload a video. If you have a question for me that you would like me to answer, email Grangersmith Podcast at gmail dot com. Gig