Offensive Christianity w/ J. Chase Davis: Ep. 494

feel unindividuated. We are simply another gear in the machine, and not even a unique one. Everyone is doing everything, and so what is the purpose of a man? This isn't just coming from the political right, particularly after the twenty twenty four election, but let's be honest, for decades before that, the progressives have been asking what do we do with men? What is the role for men? And

they do not have a good answer. One of the most interesting recurring articles of the last four or five years is something along the lines of is Hassan Piker the lefts Joe Rogan. Now, look, it's a stupid article, sort of wish casting, desirous of a authoruthenticity, it's almost impossible to create as a man on the progressive left. But a big part of it is asking the question, well, how can a man be part of our coalition? What

role can he embody? A few years ago he could be vouch, he could be a debate bro, but for fairly obvious reasons, he fell out of fashion, and so some sort of bizarre himbo moron socialist streamer seems to be the best answer they've got. And if you're not that, well, I guess you can be Harry Sisson, an effeminate pillowbier. But on our side of things, this is a question up for debate as well. Figures like Matt Walsh the Turfs,

they tend to define sex in exclusively biological definitions. A man is an adult human male, a woman an adult human female. I understand why that definition is one that's put forth. We're dealing with the transgender movement. So it makes sense, of course, to focus on the biology of it. But there's more than that. There are many people who meet at criteria have the right chromosomes and they've reached the age of majority, but they aren't a man by

any meaningful metric. Even within the religious world, this has become a live issue. I had on Benjamin Michael orthodox Luigi not too long ago to talk about the ongoing problem with masculinity in the church, and my guest today JJ S. Davis has written a very good book on it. It is religious, he's Protestant from a similar faith tradition to mine. But this book is important to people period to men. Sure, you know there's some Bible verses in it, but if those offend you, and maybe give him a

shot and two, you should still read it anyway. He lays out a very compelling argument that men have a role, they have a purpose, and they need to embody that purpose, not simply by virtue of their biology. But there is a goal to aim for, there's something to aspire to, and that lack of aspirational goal is why I think men are retreating from so many institutions. There's no way I can see myself succeeding there, there's no path for me.

I think it's a big reason that young men are returning to traditional groups of any stripe, a desire for a role, a desire for a reason. The reason I said post industrial is because in a previous era, this question would be almost ridiculous. It would be obviously apparent what the purpose of a man and a woman was. We were low enough down on Mouthus's pyramid to understand well what we needed to do. No one's gaze again to their naval wondering about the purpose of life when

there's a saber tooth tiger at the door. But as we have become more specialized, as we have become more industrialized, and as we have become wealthier, well, these questions have arisen. And even within the evangelical world, right the nominal conservative Christians, they're completely and totally unprepared for it. They are very comfortable speaking to women because for the vast majority of time religion was female, those were the majority of people

in the pews. That is no longer the case, and so we're seeing a sort of mismatch between well intentioned but ultimately foolish ideas. Additionally, many older concerns, and I mean that in the widest possible sense of that term, are extremely hesitant to bear any sort of social cost whatsoever. So when these accusations of toxic masculinity, bigotry, sexism, racism, they melt under it because they have been conditioned to

do so. They don't understand that is tactical, that the desire to push young men out of an organization is tactical. It is a way to hobble this institution. And it's why books like Chases are important because there are many people, No doubt, if you're listening to this, you're one of them, for whom everything I've said is accepted. With we grew up in it, we understand exactly how the game works, the fact that this is a conflict one between mutually

incompatible views of the world. But for those who grew up in a time where that was maybe still but at least a more hidden truth, books like this are absolutely vital. They provide that ramp, that way to go from common received wisdom, the things that they have been told on network television, to a true understanding of the world. And again, if we are going to win, and I view that as an existential question whether we win or not. For a variety of reasons. Well, we've got to have

young men. And also, if you are a young man, this book is for you. I think many of us have felt that feeling of being cast adrift, no idea what to do or where to go. And while we don't talk about it a lot, in this discussion, we get sidetracked. We talk a lot about the fun stuff, right kind of bashing the most limbristed quote unquote conservative elite. The whole back half of this is a checklist of things to do, how to get out of the trap, how to reclaim masculinity, and not in the goofy way.

The masculinity influencer, the guy with the perfectly manicured beard, artistically selected tattoos and a TRT prescription that would kill a race horse, the Andrew Tates, the Jack Murphy's that sort of thing. The other false answer to that question, where you transition from a man to an alpha male, you become this sort of bizarre, hyper real agglomeration of secondary sex characteristics masquerading as a man. And look, don't get me wrong, I'm obviously not opposed to physical fitness

or taking good care of yourself. That's not my point at all, But that is not all there is to it. It is the same mistake expressed differently as the adult human male. Now, obviously there are other traps as well, the kind of what Chase calls sex gnosticism, the idea that your body and your soul your consciousness are separated, that you have a male body, but the spirit is completely and totally up to you. You can be in

the wrong body. But you see that same idea, albeit expressed differently in conservative circles, the idea that men and women are inherently the same, they think the same, The only difference is at best their bench press, or you know, their their predilection to acl injury. That also is a mistake, one that ultimately seedes ground to the progressives arguing from the same logic on a slightly out moded patch. Clearly,

it's not going anywhere. And this question of masculinity is interesting to me because obviously I am, albeit much less than I used to be, but a young man. I'm less young, hopefully not less of a man than I used to be, And I see myself and my peers wrestling with that. We feel as if we are out of time, the system that is not designed for us, not designed for us to succeed, and yet here we are, and that's why we must have a confident affirmative. One

might even say offensive answer to that question. So I'll turn it over to the interview with Chase. I think it was a good interview book in the description, if you're interested, it's well bound. It's a pretty book to look at. So if you're one of those people who buys books and never reads them, you'll certainly get your money's worth out of it. But if you're inclined, i'd recommend reading it. I'd recommend buying it maybe for the men in your life who were pointed in the right direction,

whether young or old, but not there yet. As far as my stuff, you guys know where to find me. Apple, Spotify, YouTube, anywhere you listen to podcasts. If you want to support me a few bucks a month on Patreon, Substack or gum road, get the episodes early in ad free. The ads are irritating, I get it, but I gotta pay a mortgage somehow, and that helps me out. Also gets you away from Chumba Casino and the other reprobates who

decide to give me a check in the mail every month. Also, if you are interested in the physical fitness side of that, something that the author and I discuss, you can head over to my sponsor, Axios Remote Fitness Coaching. Actually, I think Chase is a member. I see him in the group chat every once in a while, so you can talk to him there, can talk to me there. And JD the guy who runs it, understands these ideas well.

He is an absolute unit, very good at what he does, a lot of expertise, so be sure to take advantage of that resource. I think if you follow my link you get like two weeks free. I think I should know that Axios has been sponsoring me for years now, a fairly large portion of my life. And I mean, honestly, you should even just feel bad for him because I'm I mean me as your advertising. It's not high quality. I've been rambling for like two minutes about this and

I still don't know important details about this scheme. Now that said, anyway, here's the interview. All right, Chase Davis, Welcome to the Jay Burdens Show. How are you doing?

for my THHM that got published. And then I was doing doctoral studies for a while over at the Free University of Amsterdam. Recently exited that program once I kind of saw AI coming this way and also got the opportunity to write this book, which was kind of in my research area already, theological anthropology. Besides that, I'm active on Substack, have my own podcasts Full Proof Theology. I mean, who doesn't. You got to have your own podcast and have had a great time over there. I mean it's

been It's mainly a learning experience for me. I just get to meet a bunch of people who I think I want to learn more from or I want to challenge a little bit or kick around their ideas, and so that's been wonderful. But yeah, I'm mainly at the Well Church in Boulder, Colorado.

come to find out when we moved here. But Promise Keepers was big in the nineties and two thousands, and there's just been a lot of literature. This isn't the first book that's ever been written on the crisis of manhood in the Christian West and the late twentieth and early twentieth first century, and it probably won't be the last either. I think my book is unique and what it's proposing as opposed to the others. But this was

noticed by many many authors. There's been many attempts to figure out what's been going on with men, especially in the late half of the twentieth century. But for me personally, it was more around you know, growing up with a good dad who provided for me, who put me in sports, put me to Christian school. I there were all these kind of tropes about what it meant to be a man, what it looked like, and it kind of goes back

to the word you mentioned, masculinity. For a lot of young people today and even older men today, masculinity is simply a construct. It's a presentation to the world. It is a game of making sure you appear a certain way. And I want to get more down to the bare bones, into the basics and the design of men biologically, because a lot of it becomes very tropy, a lot of it becomes very predictable. So I think, as a young man, you want to you want to grow up and to

be a mature, godly man. A lot of times what's held out to you or are you know certain hobbies you can have, hunting, fishing, these kind of things. You go into the military. And then for a lot of young sensitive men will say, you know, they don't know what to do with a lot of these masculine categories. So you know, they're into the arts, poetry, music, stuff like this, and they don't really fit the category of that. I didn't fit cleanly in either of those council though

I was interested in music and in athletics. And so through the course of twenty eleven twenty twenty, you know, I have two sons finding out what it means to be a father, wonderful growing experience here, love my sons, and then twenty twenty hits and really the problem is right open in my mind with transgenderism and a lot of the answers that the world is providing both left and right felt insufficient and not deep enough in terms of answering the question. Like I love Matt Walsh. I

think he's a really phenomenal communicator. His documentary is great, everyone should go watch it on what is a woman? But at the end it's like a woman is an adult biological female? Good enough, right, But there's got to be more to what does it mean to be a woman than an adult biological female. And I would say the same for men. There's got to be more than both kind of a simple textbook definition of what does it mean to be a man. It's also got to be

more than just kind of a trophy. You know, you drink beer, you watch football, this kind of stuff, all of which I'm not necessarily opposed to in itself. But if that's all we're attaching to what our manhood is and who we are as men, what we're designed for, I think that's insufficient and demonstrably so, I think it's been proven to be insufficient to really gird up our civilization and the forces of ever increasing darkness that are pushing against men, that are suppressing the nature of men.

And this has bled its way into the church. I'm kind of getting thesis a little bit there. But that's kind of the background of how I came to this is, you know, I just had all these books as a young man in the church, like Wild at Heart, which I critique in the book, or a famous one was Man in the Mirror, and so a lot of these conceptions of manhood were very much like Wild a Heart,

for example, was like a therapeutic man. You know, you go and you cry out your daddy wounds, your father wounds on a men's retreat, and that's the apotheosis, the spiritual climax of what it means to be a man is grappling with your father wounds. And I find that not only to be kind of a feminine but actually counterproductive for a lot of men. They you know, they don't understand what that does to them, and how that lays up expectations that are kind of unreasonable for men.

And so that's kind of some of the literature I was surrounded by growing up in the church.

there are two two broad camps. Which is one masculinity is in itself something abusive and horrible that must be expunged. You see this in the kind of performative new males, the you know, boys who cry phenomenon, the sort of leaning into feminization, oftentimes as a sort of sneaky dating strategy,

but sort of flaunting that. That is one view. The other one is the what I call the sort of uh transgender males, right, they've transitioned from being males to alpha males, where much like the guy in the dress, they're so focused on these sort of secondary sex characteristics, you know, the like immaculately groomed beard, big muscles, tattoos, chains, the bizarre obsession with posture, you know, the green line

stuff that we all enjoy joking about. But understand, of course, there is a real version of that, And okay, maybe one is preferable to the other to a degree, but clearly these are neither one of these is a functional solution. Neither one of these is a sustainable way to live or to embody, if I can use that term, what it means to be a man. So I'm gonna throw some of your own works back at you. Figure he

might as well start with the central thesis. Christian men, stripped of their God given power by a culture that reduces manhood to ideas and demands endless empathy, must embrace offensive Christianity that boldly asserts authority and action over passive reflection. So a couple things there. One, we have that idea of God given power, and this is very clearly a hot topic in American Christianity. Now, Chase, you and I

come from a similar faith background. I'm not going to get too much into the kind of inter Protestant minutia because I think this applies to Christianity writ large. But suffice it to say that is a contentious statement, the idea that one there is a God given order where men have a different role than women. So what's your support for that claim?

about them should assert themselves. This is normal in sports, for example. I bring this up all the time, not to be redundant, but because it's just a great example that when men enter a competitive field, whether it's a hockey match, soccer, football, tennis, golf, whatever it is, they're gonna want to win. They want to They have a competitive drive about them. Women also have a competitive drive. This isn't to say that, you know, they don't compete

as well in their own ways. Men distinctly, though, their competitive drive is driven by their biology, by what they're by their aspirations, all this cod of stuff. And so this idea with power, particularly, it's been kind of beat Evangelicals, particularly Protestants, have been beat over the head with either a worship of power they just want power, or look how bad they are because they have power. Power is seen as this like really negative attribute of just human existence.

Which if you just kind of turn the cube a little bit, you're like, this is actually nonsense on its face, Like everybody wants power, agency, the ability to change things.

Power is not inherently bad. It can be misused, of course, but like men today often have been so beat over the head and beat down with this kind of narrative, especially in the church, a lot of churches will trot out this idea that having power in and of itself, like just having any powers, is inherently problematic or oppressive, right because you're kind of over someone else or in charge of someone else, responsible for someone else. At the worst,

of course, it would double into things. We would all disavow abuse or anything like this. But power itself is bad. It's an idol, and you have to divest yourself of your idol of power. And this is reallyhelpful and unproductive language. It's sneaky language too, because it diminishes the natural capacities of men to assert themselves. And instead, what we want to do is have an appropriate use of power. Know that we have power, know that we can influence things,

and then use that productively towards God's glory. It's not complicated, but we've made it so complicated because one, the left has been attacking evangelical power in America for so long now, and two the Church has kind of adopted that talking point and said, yeah, it's right, They're right. We are ashamed of power, you know, we don't want power. We just are here to serve. Of course, the use Bible versus justify all this, taking them out of context and

importing them into the left. It's narrative, but it's not only unhelpful, it's harmful to the Church's witness to men, particularly because when men do have power, they don't know what to do with it. You know, they have no concept of like, I'm going to accrue power and wield power for God's glory in my lifetime, which is a very normal like throughout human civilization, throughout history, this has been normal aspiration of men. This is what men do,

This is how they were made. They have responsibilities and duties. There is kind of a natural hierarchy. This is not a problem, but we've just bought this kind of weird narrative around power that we're either not allowed to have it or it's kind of like what you mentioned with masculinity is just a problem in and of itself that needs to be eradicated.

never heard of. And does it seem to actually be what the article is about. What the article is functionally about is it is illegitimate for you, as a conservative religious person in America to take any power at all. What you should focus on is on losing with grace. And it's a great article because that is a through line you see and a lot of regime approved conservative evangelical thought. But this guy's not smart enough to hide it.

He just come out and says it. And so much of that argumentation is it is being deployed in a specific context, right, they're churching it up literally as well. As figuratively, but functionally it is power is bad when you use it because you are bad, and good when me or my friends use it because we're good. So, for instance, in this instance, it's saying it's completely illegitimate for people to pursue their own self interest. It is

completely legitimate for for others. Particularly this was during you know, kind of one of the big BLM flare ups for them to do it. So so much of this attitude towards power is, in my mind, it's just a deliberate strategy. It's I know you're going to disagree with me, so I'd rather you just not even try to begin with.

And again, this is not to say that there isn't an actual discussion to be had about the relationship between faith and power, or the relationship between masculinity and femininity, but we have to acknowledge a lot of this is basically go away and shut up. I don't want you to say anything like that, is what so much of this discussion is. If you see what I'm saying, Chase.

of the world. I see this all the time in church world, especially as a pastor. You all pastors who are you know, famous, have a large platform or anything like that, much larger than me, and they'll get up on the stage and lecture you about how you shouldn't

aspire to have influence, you should aspire a power. You know, how dare you want to be a big name or anything like this, all while they get like book tours and they want evangelical cruises to lecture everybody about how they you know, they're not worthy of accruing such influence. It's just hypocrisy, and it grosses me out, it should grows anyone out. Again, I don't necessarily fault these guys.

I don't think they're necessarily being nefarious. This guy over the Gospel Coalition that you mentioned could be you know, a paid well not anymore US eight actor, but he could be kind of like a Patsy. But this is a known communist strategy, marks a strategy they called the

clergy the easiest to manipulate. So yeah, when they write these articles, and again I haven't delved much into the Seven Mountain mandate, I've heard of this trotted out by even l or not even jocal outlets left this outlets like The New York Times to really like highlight, they're always going to find like a bad example, right, Oh, this is a prime example of what we're trying to

get rid of. So let's use the most either egregious or kind of warped version of it in order to show you how ugly it is in order to suppress your instincts for self preservation. And once you kind of see the game, it becomes very frustrating because you're trying to explain the game to other people, but they're they're still very concerned. They give you the concern. Bro. Yeah, but like that's a bad movement. I'm like, I'm not here to talk about that movement. I don't I know

very little to nothing about that movement. But it's a game that's being played on you. And what they want you to do is just be what conservatives have been, which is beautiful losers.

despicable to me. It's shameful behavior. Again, I don't count them as enemies necessarily, but I think they're definitely you know, co belligerence with the left when they trot out these ideas. And what I want, for the reason I wrote the book is not just to critique that, but to give

a more positive vision. What would it look like to actually encourage men and families and women to stand strong in the face of cultural forces that are ever encroaching upon them that setro wrote their way of life in any given nation, whether it's America, England, France, whatever it may be, you know, how do we fight this stuff? Well,

I think for me it comes down to men. We need strong, courageous men rooted in Christ using power agency influence their propensity to pursue their creation, mandate the domini, mandate for God's glory, and to pre tech their families, to protect their civilization from forces of darkness, whether that's outside forces or forces of Then.

or not, are desperate for approval. You see the same thing with like the LDS guys, which don't want to start a fight with the Mormons, but they exist in this bizarre position of being an outsider and of being the butt of every joke for so long that they start to act very, very desperate for approval, and so they will tie themselves into not trying to form this sort of bizarre syncratic mix of general culture and their

specific faith tradition. Conversation for another time. So the next part of your thesis statement talking about obviously the power that men have being stripped by a culture that reduces manhood to ideas. So this might be my favorite part of the book. At least. The thing that really grabbed my attention was the way you talk about the link between manhood and embodiment. So you mentioned earlier, of course, the Matt Walsh documentary reducing a woman to adult human female.

Obviously tactically when you were talking to it insane troon that that argument works, but as a totalizing definition, it leaves a lot out there. So I'm curious what is your view. I imagine it contrasts with the simply biological, the simply sort of Oxford Dictionary description, and why does that matter?

biblical truth in there. Right, we see in Ecclesiastes in many other places that God has set eternity in the hearts of men. Men have a desire for this eternal glory, right, we watch movies that celebrate it. We want to be like Maximus and Gladiator. We want to be the hero of the story. Obviously, Christ is the hero of the story. And yet we all have our own journey. We all have control and agency our own life and where we're going to end up to under God's providence and sovereignty.

And we should turn to Christ so that we can enjoy that glory forever and ultimately relish in His beauty and majesty. But that itself is the destination men. That is what men were built for, and by a log they were fit for the task of not just being hungry for glory, but being vice regents in the world, and so their very bodies cry out for dominion. There's a there's a sense of expansiveness to men where they

want to take over. They want to like have, whether it's your you're a sales rep and you want to you know, crush the competitors, or you're a political figure and you want to ascertain national sovereignty. This is natural biologically to men. This of course gets corrupted by the fall biologically, but those biological propensities don't go away, they just get warped. They get corrupted, so that men now sin and very great capacities because of their power and authority.

This is why the majority and not to get on prisons or anything like this, but the majority of crime is committed by men, right, The majority of dangerous jobs men do, the majority of murder, and the prison population is men. It because men have naturally been imbued with a sense of dominion and agency and power where they want to influence, They want to change things. They see something that is unmade and they want to make it better or in the negative way, and sometimes it's necessary

to kind of burn the ship, so to speak. But you also want to change things. You want to make the system different or make your life different, and you can do those things. But men were fit biologically for glory and ultimately to find glory in God.

a very good education there. But they are similarly biased against young men in the way that the day is scheduled, the kind of punishment of certain infractions. But we see the same thing sort of echoed throughout the conservative and evangelical world. So you see this expectation that to be godly, or to be particularly devout, you have to effectively act like your in therapy at all times, right, that is

the appropriate way to interact one to another. And it kind of very sort of I guess you would say, overly emotional, hyper sort of confessing way, not in the Christian sense of that word, and sort of a more kind of talk therapy, sitting down on the couch sense. And I find that dissonance really irritating. It's like, okay, yeah, I agree with you on that premise. Women are not faulty men. Seemingly the converse should be true as well.

Right if these are two distinct categories, each with its own sort of I guess you could say God given roles and gifts, then it stands to reason both of those things are important. And in this book you use a term that I particularly like, called sex gnosticism. I appreciate the brief aside where you talk about how gnosticism might be one of the most myths and overused terms because it equally gets on my nerves. So just a brief aside there, But what do you mean when you

talk about sex gnosticism? Because it was a great term, and as soon as I read it, I was like, oh, that's exactly what you were describing so manyay, I'll kick it back to you jays.

of female way of reasoning. You'll say a general statement about a population and they'd be like, well, that's not true for everyone, right, So it's just kind of a defense mechanism where we can't know anything, and yet we can also have full authority to speak to everything at

the same time. So there's this kind of willing blindness about the differences, where we're blind to differences between the sexes, and yet we assert kind of these general things, like you mentioned that men are somehow defunct women, and this

has been trotted out since the Victorian era. Specifically, I know some I was listening to something the other day where somebody connects it to Bernard of Clairvaux, where I think it was Albert Mohler, maybe I don't remember, But basically, the turn from spirit virtuality being an outward kind of obedience, conformity, religious behavior with duties attendant duties fitting to your station and your sex, to an inward personal experience. And I

go into this in great detail on the book. I of course am tying it back to kind of Enlightenment reasoning and rationalism and romanticism and Pietism, all this kind of stuff. But there's this kind of a willing blindness where we can't talk about the differences, and if we do, we're somehow like bigots or something like this. This is just nonsense. Those are just magic words that people try out to try to get you to be quiet. And so instead what we should do is just honor the

distinct nature of men and women, you know. And a lot of people, even by talking about this, they're like, well, that's demeaning to women. I'm like, I literally have said no thing I have in the book. I thoroughly say that women themselves are valuable to the Lord. They have a place in this great civilizational test, this great kingdom work,

you could say, to expand God's kingdom. They're fundamental and essential to the propagation of the human race for first of all with them being able to bear children, but also but they're also you know, uniquely designed. That's why Eve was creative for Adam to be. Has helped me to come alongside him and accomplish things. And uh, I don't go into a lot of detail on women in the book, not because I wish to ignore them. I'm

speaking to men. I want men to remember who they are, remember why they as a young boy, had these instincts, and to know that like, yes, your education, yes, your college and university, yes, culture and movies and propaganda, and yes, even sometimes your church has told you those basic instincts to protect, to provide, to win, to achieve that desire for glory you have. Those are not necessarily wrong instincts.

They may be directed towards bad ends, but we want men to be creatures that God made them to be, to pursue glory, To go out and try to take a risk, make something of yourself, stand up and you know, stand for your own family, your own religion, and not

bow in the faces of these cultural pressures. We're recording as of now during the you know, this secular high Holy month, the secular Ramadan, the Pride month, where they trod out this perversion out there, and many Christians just kind of go like, oh, you know, I'm not going to speak about it. I don't want to offend. And I'm like, oh, my goodness, we're so far gone. We're

so far gone. I don't believe all is lost. But this kind of attitude is really shameful in terms of when we look at our history and what we're made for men should be the front lines speaking up about the truth of marriage, about the beauty of women and what they were made for, about what men were made for, and assuming leadership roles and asserting themselves and really not bothering themselves with all the naysayers and the narratives that are kind of foisted upon them by the world which

seeks to suppress their nature.

We see something very similar with empathy. So, for instance, there's limitless empathy for certain crimes, for instance, you know less than optimal past sexual behavior, a whole number of different left wing policies where if you are, let's be honest, rude, if you say something you're not supposed to in sort of a right word direction, you were cast into a proverbial lake of fire. You become a shudra, an untouchable if you will. So that being said, why is empathy

important in this discussion? Why is it something that bears mentioned Because at least right off rip, you'd assume, well, other than passing mention, why is it important to talk about empathy in a book about men? Right, it's not normally a trade associated.

common refrain, and it muddles the brain. It gets in there like a mind virus and makes them incapable of reasoning through things. And all of a sudden, now we can't punish sin, or even punish crime for that matter. We have to be endlessly empathetic. We have to listen to others and listen and learn endlessly about other people's experience. And this is just the common narrative. It gets also into my section on niceness, how basically the end all be all for a man is to just be nice.

Be nice. Seriously, the leftist kind of redditor will say, be a decent human being, you know, this kind of this kind of stuff. And so the idea there is like we're going to be empathetic. It's incredibly hypocritical. They're never empathetic to the right. You know, they constantly are are unpersoning people who are threatening people with heinous crimes.

If you mentioned anything about natural order or hierarchy or any kind of these things, or speak up at a pulpit about these matters, you know, they're going to try to come after you. But no, we have to be empathetic to any kind of crime, perversion in society, or people who practice false religion publicly. We have to be empathetic, don't you understand. You know, that's just their culture. That's

how they were raised. These people that come over and you know, play play music on their iPhones on speakerphone, on public transportation or in public at Walgreens, they're just walking around and this is just their culture. That's how

they're raised. And it's like, no, it's like we can just not like that, Like we don't have to just like empathize with Well, that's just their lived experience which is trotted out so often, and so for me, it comes down a lot to authenticity, which I also critique in the book, kind of the paradigm of living your true self, kind of the disneyfication of evangelicalism, where like the gold standard of spiritual maturity is being authentic, but

you can be authentically good, authentically evil. Authenticity is a negligible term that has really no attachment to virtue. You want to be sincere, but even sincerity is again, you could be heinously evil and very sincere about it. So it's not necessarily a virtue that we're supposed to embody. But because of this kind of empathy game, most people just hear sincerity or earnestness in someone and they're like, well, I should listen to them. We should listen and learn from everyone.

turn it into a pyramid of skull. I mean lying to you well again, right, that is something that to your point, has really crippled a lot of Christian institutions because it and these people, whoever you, whoever they are in your brain, are very adept at this, which is taking a charitable inclination, right, a desire to do the right thing, and weaponizing it against fundamentally good people, A term I don't particularly like due to the fact that

John Calvin's been beaten into my brain, but functionally will go with it. Right, But in all seriousness, evangelicals need to wrestle with the fact that effectively, what a state does not punish, it condones that simply by refusing to speak out, by sort of looking the other way, by sort of obsessing with bringing in more people, but you know, widening the gate, sort of decreasing the barrier to entry. You're, by extension, putting your stamp of approval on those bad behaviors.

One of the most interesting demographic trends, and albeit this is still small numbers, but it is sharply departing from a long term trend, is that more young men are going to churches, particularly very traditional churches. Obviously the Orthodox are exploding, the TLM guys are growing. My own church and others like it are also seeing dramatic increases in

predominantly young men, and I think at least. A big part of that is that guys are looking for something that requires something of them, that is hard, that is difficult. So many of these institutions are focused on being welcoming, letting anyone in the gate. And if something is for everyone, it's sort of for no one. And this endless mass market appeal, like we've seen with entertainment, like we've seen with every other aspect of culture, has produced just sort

of gray, unindividuated slop, just absolute nothing. And look, is there a time and place for empathy, Sure, but be very cautious when someone brings that up. There's a section in this book that made me very, very angry. It's a quote you pulled from John Piper talking about how if a man in a ski mask broke into his house and was intent on violating his wife, he wouldn't do anything. It's like, I wouldn't want to be mean, I wouldn't want to be rude. I'm empathizing with that person,

you know, I wouldn't want to cause them harm. And Okay, that's a ridiculous example, ridiculous enough that he deleted it at the very least. But oftentimes empathy is an excuse it is an excuse to externalize problems away from me to other people. So I don't want to feel icky or gross or like the bad guy. So I'll just keep letting this problem exist because it doesn't directly affect me all while these people have the ability to cast themselves as morally superior. Far from it. This is just

a deferral. Right. You were externalizing the consequences to someone else, a behavior we see all too often. So props to you for putting that example. And it did exactly what it was supposed to do, which is one convinced me you were right, and two made me very angry at the guy who put forth that original article.

I remember a few years ago our church got kicked out of a location we're renting because we stood on the Bible on marriage and sexuality. It's in our statement of faith. You can find it boulderwell dot org find our statement of faith. And simply because some redditors and leftists had found it, they put pressure on the business.

The business canceled our lease. I talked with a bigger name evangelical leader in our context and he was like, you know, we're getting op eds written negatively about our church. They were calling us things like, you know, we're trying to be the Christian Taliban or something like this. And I was like, this is not ideal. This is not what people want, you know, and my church members aren't going to enjoy if they have to go to work.

for the city. How you're welcoming to people, how you're not what they say you are. And I was like, yeah, I don't think that's our speed. Man, Like that's the typical evangelical response, though, is you know, we we have to kind of placate and put up with whatever they say about us and then prove to them, based on spurious allegations and spurious slanders and implications of what we believe, all of this, we have to prove to them are

our morality. And I'm like, we're done. That's over. I'm not here to prove to people who are sinners that I myself am not a sinner. Like that's not that's not a game that's winnable. I'm here to preach the Gospel to raise up families in Christ and I'm not playing to lose and to see my children and here a future where it's worse for them than it is

for me. And so the Piper example is very useful because it's very, like I said, emblematic of a passivity that is rampant in evangelicals where they don't want to assert themselves. They if you talk to an evangelical and mention something like we're going to impose our will on our opponents, they would be like, oh, my goodness, that is so on Christ, Like, you know, that's just their natural way of thinking. And I'm trying to get them

back to the Bible. And God's designed for men to say, not only is it normal that you want to win, but it's also like good because you know Christ, that you should want evil to be stopped. These are like it's it's almost laughable that that would be controversial at all in our day, but that that's like normal human experiences, normal for Christians. And they'll use all sorts of Bible

verses to justify kind of this subservience. They want this dimitude, this cultural dimitude, this kind of endless like martyrdom, and that that to them is like the chief end of man is to be martyred, is to live in dimitude, because then at least we're pure. And I'm like, this is despicable behavior. Martyrdom may come. Okay, martyrdom can happen. Persecution it happened. That's not something we should pursue as a policy. That's that's asinine.

old you know, moral quandary. You know, should you should you sell your children into slavery to feed the poor, which is, you know, on its face, sort of ridiculous example, but it's the same thing, right, It's like, should I sacrifice someone else to increase the net amount of utility in the world? You know, there more people are more happy because I did this. And obviously the counter is no, because that's not real charity. That's not your decision to

make right. You were ruining someone else's life. And yet this is exactly what is happening, Like, Okay, sure it's not literal slavery, although you know, look at advances in the modern economy, it's at least close enough. But to then cast that decision, it's the morally correct, the only acceptable way to act. It's absolutely totally infuriating. And if there's one idea I could get across two conservatives, it's this, if you are a threat to the progressives, they will

never stop attacking you, no matter what. Whatever thing they yell at you probably won't even be true, but they will keep attacking you until you are no longer a threat. And let's be honest a little bit after that. That is the one way to get them to go away, which is to show them your belt right, to become completely totally subservient and non threat. And if you accept that, hey, we are enemies, we have a different view on things. They're not gonna like you. It's sort of core to

the conception of enmity. They are going to want you to go away. You sort of have to steel yourself to that. There's really no way to get out of that without becoming a demi, a vassal. They're ruder words for that, but we'll leave it there. Those are your two options. Either you're going to get called mean names or you're going to get absorbed by the blob. There's

really nothing else. And particularly with older people, I think there is a desire to return to an era in which they could hold their small orthodox beliefs and not face any consequences for it. And I get it. I would like to live in a world where that was the case, but fundamentally we don't live there. And in order to get back to that, you might have to

be just the tiniest bit meat. You might have to be a little bit intransigent, you might have to say no to someone, and a lot of people are really uncomfortable with that. Fundamentally, don't shoot the messenger. Okay, I'm twenty seven. I didn't make this world. I was born into it. So our two options are either I was gonna use a rude word, We're gonna say, be a demi to the regime, or get called me names. And that's pretty much what it comes down to. Jase.

liberalism is this civility. We want to live in a civil society. We want, you know, ideally you're talking about these older people, they want less crime, They want everybody to get along. You know, I think about I'm a parent, I have kids. I would like for them to get along. That would be nice, you know. But my son's are rivals in some ways. They have a competition in them and they want to be better than each other, and they love each other. But that's just natural to how

they are. And so this worship of civility really tamps a lot of male suppression to get out there and speak their mind, to be honest with what they believe. Again, we need to encourage young men and Christian men particularly be shrewd and cunning and wise and mature. These are Christian teachings that I'm teaching right now through overbs at my church. We want people to be wise and know the times. Part of that wisdom means, like you said,

soberly assessing the times we live in. And like you said, if we if we live in a time where the left is going, if they, you know, catch you as an actor publicly or even in private that stands especially on God's word that is unbending on those things, they're

going to do everything they can to harm you. And like you said, it's it may not be martyred them and it may not be beheading, but they're going to just slander your name such that when somebody looks up your name or looks up your repetition, they're gonna they're going to essentially try to make you unemployable. And so I think it's really interesting because a lot of Christians they have in their mind kind of like I'm willing to die for Christ. We should be willing to die

for Christ. Martyrdom is you know, they're okay, yeah, I'm gonna face the lions for Christ. But when it comes to lesser forms of persecution, they're like, yeah, but that's too that would cost me, you know, convenience is or comfort or you know, worst case I could get debanked or something like this, and they're not willing to do that, And it's like, what makes you think you're going to go to further forms of persecution if you're not willing

to do that. And it's often done under the name of just trying to like play a game or like survive, and it typically doesn't go well. It just doesn't go well.

Christians need to embrace an offensive Christianity, one that's forthright about what we believe, unflinching in the face of opposition, and also links together and networks together with other resources, because it can be very lonely if you are a Christian, especially in a more democrat context a bluer context, it can feel very lonely for many people, where it's like, am I going crazy? Am I the only one in

the world who feels this way? I might find people online, but it sure would be nice to have people in real life who if I lost my job or if I needed help, I could count on them and I know they wouldn't try to corrupt my children or my family if I needed them to come into my life in a significant way, and so ultimately conservatives, but particularly Christians, need to link arms together to encourage one another, to provide resources to one another, to to form what I

call in the Book of Phalanx of Christians who can withstand, because many of us are tempted in a variety of ways to either bow or capitulate, or give in or just not speak when we should speak. And I'm like, no, we should. We should be speaking more. That takes training. You're gonna have to use your voice. You're gonna fail sometimes. But we need to trust Christ and we need to carry forward his truth into the world rather than shirking back.

couple things I want to get on to. The proscriptive, the sort of positive vision realised We've spent roughly fifteen minutes complaining about American evangelicals, which you know is a pass off of mine. That are my people. I love them, but also boys, sometimes you don't make it easy to love you. So you lay out a couple of different sort of active decisions that can be made. There. One of them you mentioned to sort of form a FAILAX FAILANX, right,

get a group together. What are other ways that men who've been convinced by your thesis can solve that issue?

all sorts of pressures again to you. But bitterness never produces the virtue that we aspire, the glory that we aspire to achieve, and so bitterness is going to corrode your soul. It's going to eat you alive, and that resentment, that kind of boiling energy where you're looking around you know, it's it's almost never productive towards God's and said, we need to be productive, and we need to figure out how to deal with what we've got to deal with now.

The other thing I get into at great length is biology and getting fit. There's a lot of talk online and other places about kind of the fitness industry, particularly in male spaces, about you know, whether it's peptides or bench press or you know, running, whatever it is. But I think a big problem in our world is not merely that people don't know the Lord, although of course, as a minister and acres a Christian, I think that is the pre imminent problem. The other problems are a

lot of them are iological. So a lot of the things that we get diagnosed with today, whether it's anxiety or depression or ADHD, a lot of them we know now may simply be hormonal imbalances, dietary issues, the fact that you're seedentary, the fact that you are overweight, and a lot of your life can be improved and your agency will be improved as you, for example, get your testosterone levels improved, So if we if we have a mass decline of testosterone among men in America, and this

is evangelicals are men in America evan jocalmen, you know, then it wouldn't be surprising that you're going to find low T men. You're going to find low T men in the pulpit. You're going to find men who are kind of acting more feminine and their dispositions and outlook. They're going to shape institutions, They're going to shape seminaries, they're going to shape the gospel coalition, They're going to shape you know, worship whatever it may be, and the

sermons and all that. One of the key ways that I think we can recover kind of this agenic kinetic fuma for men is by getting men to not get ontoesosterone, but to at least get their T levels. Check to see if that's an issue for them, because my suspicion as it is that they need to investigate ways to just help themselves both spiritually materially to live into their

nature as men. I suggest very simple remedies in the book, like doing pull up, some push ups, or having seminaries require competitive sports or something like this, just anything to

get men active. We live in such a sedentary age and the Industrial Revolution has really there's many blessings that we have because of the Industrial Revolution, like being on this podcast, but it's also a lot of implications in our life where we're just very sedentary, often staring at a blue screen, and the best you can hope for is kind of the next either addictive game or show that can entertain you to sleep. And this is no

way to live. This is I don't think anybody when they if they were to be authentic and sincere would admit, at least on the right, would admit like, yeah, I'm not proud of doom scrolling. I'm not. I don't like that behavior. But I also like it's a nice dopamine head. And this is also something I try to teach, like God designed dopamine, and he designed dopamine to be one attached to your wife if you're a man, and he

attached it. He designed it to be attached to your productivity in life, so that your kind of chemical hardwiring is for like, as you achieve things, you kind of like you get into a flow state and you achieve more things. This is all natural, this is what God designed, but a lot of Christians just don't talk about it because they want to obsess over ideas, and they want to obsess over kind of like simp the material the spiritual concerns, which, of course, again, your soul is more important.

I think I say this in the book the soul has a greater pre eminence. Why because our eternal destination. While it is embody and in soul, there will be a time where the body is separated from the soul, and so that soul persists throughout any kind of an intermediate state when it's detached from the body, when the body goes into the ground, and then it is reunited either to eternal bliss in heaven or eternal damnation and hell.

And so our bodies do matter greatly. I'm not trying to diminish the importance of prayer or activities that like worship or anything like that, but we just totally ignore many times the material aspects of men. And that's one of the most I think it's one of the chief battlegrounds that we're facing today, especially in the church, is we just don't even talk about these things. We don't talk about how you dress, how you look, and we're

not getting into looks maxim or anything like that. But we do want men to be shaped like men in their very body, to dress well as fitting as is fitting for men. All these things are actually really important and not dishonoring to God. It's not it's not vanity to be concerned with one the way you look, how fit you are, because that's going to shape your apprehension of the divine.

I was a fat kid. That change from one just even losing weight, but two, being physically active is impossible to overstate, even down to the confidence you display in social settings like then, we have this sort of background calculation running in any interaction, which is could I win this fight? And it's like very deep, it's like lizard brain stuff. You know, I'm not saying you should actually swing on your boss, you know, when you ask to

do something at the office. I'm not saying you shouldn't do it. But in all seriousness, right, that part of you that is sort of weighing, that physicality, it's always there, can't really get rid of it, that sort of hierarchy seeking part of the male brain, that social dynamic. You were handicapping yourself. You were putting yourself in this sort of resentful state of mind. And that may sound like

woo woo nonsense, it's genuinely not. I mean, look at like all the ground Jordan Peterson was able to cover with basically like clean your room, you know, wash yourself and stand up straight. And it's like, okay, well, I mean that's certainly start. It's better than nothing. But that same trend he's identifying, it's like that applies much more so to being a male shaped mail, which is a pretty low bar to clear.

can think of in my life. Like there's really no morning I wake up and I'm like, wish I was still fat anyway, sorted out to get too much into the self help stuff. Just wanted to sort of add an addition, Oh.

these are not opposed to one another. You should pray more, I should pray more. Everyone should pray more to the Lord, but they're not being given. And this way you go back to what you brought up earlier, the rigor kind of the basic instruction on what it looks like to follow God in this life as a man. Instead, they're given kind of platitudes and even oftentimes discouraged from focusing on the body because they've been taught that the body doesn't matter, that it's going to burn up in the end,

that it's simply an empty shell. And because of gnosticism, we want to be free of this body, and we want to you know, the material is bad inherently. We read words in English like flesh and world and don't know the grief behind them and simply read those as material existence itself is corrupt and bad and not just

unredeemable but a problem. And we just don't have a comprehensive view of these things, such that we don't encourage young men, especially in even chocal spaces, with basic things like hygiene, fitness, dressing well, all in the name of not offending them or being inclusive and being a nice person to them. And it seems more nice to avoid telling people, hey, like, if you're feeling this way, maybe

you should lose weight. That's going to be perceived as offensive sometimes and I'm like, yeah, it will be and you don't have to be like cruel. I mean, guys like to be cruel about it. We like to joke in kind of cruel ways to each other. But like, these are just basic things that a lot of Christians ignore, which is part of the reason I wrote the book.

but it's pretty close. And okay, you know, as in the moment that that sort of rankled Pride one hundred percent, but also like that's sort of how we self police, and sometimes that self policing is necessary. Anyway, Chase, this has been a ton of fun. Man. I enjoyed your book quite a bit. Obviously, there's a link down in the description if you're interested in addition to the content, it's really nicely bound, which is not often the case

with kind of dissident literature. So I appreciate that, you know, as someone who has quite a lot of it on their shelf. But other than I guess your your book, Offensive Christianity, your Twitter, and your substack. Is there anywhere else people can find you?

me on Twitter at Jjsdavis substack jjsdavis dot com. Lots going on. I've also got kind of I know we're wrapping up here, but just as a brief aside, I started a cool project on the side because a lot of the stuff I'm attacking in the book is modern kind of rationalism and a lot of the literature that Christians read today is based in that scheme, that frame

of mind. I started a website called Commonplace dot Study where you can read premodern sources and you can actually use kind of an AI search engine on that thing to go find sources that are better than what you're

going to get at your local Christian bookstore. And if you're a pastor or scholar Christian thinker is serious about especially Protestantism, I have tons of one of resources, many of which have never been published or translated at Commonplace dot Study, So I'd highly recommend for an intellectual audio such as yours. Go check out that website.